Ye Who Endure Here
by Laryna6
Summary: The Cat Who Walks Through Walls Qverse AU. Third Impact devastated a world still grieving the billions lost in Second Impact. There may still be a way to save their battered world, but even those still fighting for the future of the Lilim have been poisoned by despair. Just as planned.
1. Chapter 1

The Cat Who Walks Through Walls _is a mostly-Rebuild _Evangelion_ AU, started before Q came out and with a lot of scenes set after the end of 2.22. __Then Q did come out, and instead of 'Third Impact was prevented and mostly covered up and things went back to near-anime normal' there was the horrible dystopia._

_I started wondering about an alternate universe version of The Cat Who, where the Third Impact happened the way it happened according to Q. Since it was in my head, I decided to get it written before I get back to the happy/crackish scenario. Consider this an alternate Bad Ending scenario that diverges at Third Impact._

_I originally published this 'verse in the main fic as sort of an omake, but even though this fic is dependant on _The Cat Who's _worldbuilding, when I asked reviewers they thought it would be less confusing instead of more confusing if posted seperately, both because this is AU of the main fic and because this is much, much more depressing than the main fic. _

_I seriously recommend reading _The Cat Who Walks Through Walls _first, but a short version of the worldbuilding is that angels were designed to terraform worlds full of humans which would then create more angels (generational dimorphism, like fern seed), spreading humanity throughout several universes. Planetary human AT fields are designed for mental attack and defense (while angels have telekinesis and physical shields to let them survive space travel and terraform worlds), since humanity is a psychic species. Screaming insane angels caused Earth's humans to huddle behind mental shields, meaning that not only were they starved for mental contact, but they never developed the psychic warfare capabilities that normally would have allowed them to handle angels. After SEELE set off Second Impact, Tabris was the one remaining angel who retained both sanity and knowledge of humanity's true nature. _

_Unfortunately, while angels are humans, they're products of genetic and mental engineering refined for a_ very _long time, meaning the psychological difference between an angel-type human and a planetary human is a _lot _bigger than little things like planetary human age and gender differences. They__ are wired for terraforming, not dealing with messed-up societies or interpersonal difficulties in general (otherwise Adam and Lilith having equal claims to Earth wouldn't have taken billions of years to resolve), and the only thing he could think to do was train one of the future pilots in psychic warfare and angel capabilties so he could fight off the other angels and hopefully figure out some means of dealing with the crazy death cult known as SEELE. In theory, with the other angels dead, Earth's humans could have come out from behind their mental shields and regained their true power and the stars. But this is Eva._

The Cat Who Walks Through Walls _is more light-hearted than the standard Eva, since Shinji grew up with at least one caring family member (if by adoption) and is a lot better at bonding with others. This 'verse... Is Q-based. _

* * *

The second time Kaji met the hero of the hour, the pilot from SEELE's moonbase who had kept Third Impact from being a total impact was in his melon patch.

Not that it was_ his_ melon patch anymore. The inside of the Geofront could be protected from the outside environment. The alien planet that had replaced Earth, thanks to that angel and the Eva.

NERV and SEELE were trying to blame Shinji Ikari. It would have really depressed Kaji that people were seriously buying that if he wasn't used to it by now. How easily the truth was hidden. What gullible idiots most people were.

The UN already seized all remaining arable land, to make sure it was planted with crops. It wasn't as though Kaji really minded: he liked not starving to death as much as the next person. But maybe there was an element of nostalgia in how he'd ended up here. Of course he wanted to check out the plantings, see if NERV and SEELE were even pretending to make a serious effort to feed what was left of the human race. The amount of industry, the plantings and greenhouses that sprung up down here overnight would have been more reassuring if Tokyo-3 wasn't a fortress.

Gendo Ikari and the others didn't want to die before they accomplished whatever terrible purpose they had. So of course they'd move to secure their own food supply. By planting crops somewhere the starving masses wouldn't be able to get their hands on them.

He'd expected to find his melons plowed under, or already picked. His patch covered up by new plantings and construction to the point that he wouldn't even be able to figure out where it once was.

Sound echoed in the geofront: between all the construction and people calling to each other in the distance, he didn't hear the humming until he was right on top of the kid. That white hair was instantly recognizable. Recognized the world over now, or what was left of it, thanks to SEELE wanting to hold up their boy as the reason anybody at all was left. "Wasn't expecting to find you here," he said, walking forward.

"According to NERV, I should be in testing right now," the boy agreed, brushing the dust off a leaf. Even though the melons hadn't been torn up, it looked like all the dust kicked up around them during the construction had left them the worse for wear. "But I managed to get some of my testing data from the moonbase released," which was news to Kaji: he'd heard Ritsuko mutter about how they didn't have anything on this kid but his birthday just yesterday, "and I know quite a lot about hydroponics."

"I guess even kids on the moon have chores."

The boy – Kaworu – smiled at him. "Something like that. I've been down here whenever I could get away: most of the people with the expertise for this sort of project were brought up to the moonbase years ago, and… I understand why the decision has been made to have them focus on expanding the moonbase's food production capacity."

The moonbase: somewhere else starving rioters couldn't get at. Somewhere the old men could retreat to when that started to go down: from the shadows in Kaworu's red eyes, the faint sense of disapproval, he knew the boy had figured that out too.

Oh, the official reason was that the moon, though clearly not out of range given what First Impact'd done to it, was at least a _little _more likely to escape something that destroyed the planet. With Earth prettymuch dead meat at this point, it only made sense to focus on figuring out human survival in space. Start seriously thinking about sending some people over towards Mars. They'd have to grow their own food there, too.

The strategic reserves of materials and food built up for WWIII had already been plundered after Second Impact. What was left of them wouldn't last much longer. After they were gone, Earth wouldn't even be able to feed its own surviving population. Forget supplying explorers, forget devoting any resources towards long-term survival. Towards a future that was only a pipe dream.

If this boy still had some fight left in him, though?

In Kaji's experience, the people outraged by whatever fraction of the truth they'd discovered made crappy sources. Sure, they'd give him what information they had, but that was if they lived long enough to get it to him. SEELE was good at spotting potential leaks and dealing with them, one way or another.

Accidents. 'Reassigned to the moonbase,' and never showing up on any passenger manifests.

The moonbase was SEELE's most secure facility for obvious reasons, and this boy had grown up there. Inside the belly of the beast. What did he know? What had he seen of what they were studying up there, away from prying eyes?

His lack of faith in the Committee made him a potential source. It also marked him for death. NERV needed pilots, but with Asuka fixed up they had two spares… Except not for much longer, if Misato had anything to say about it.

If Kaji could make this boy a source, and WILLE could make him _indispensable _to the old men of the Committee and the Commander of NERV… They'd kept him locked up tight in the moonbase for years, and now he'd gotten a taste of freedom? A little teenage rebellion was to be expected: Kaji was already working on how to use Shinji against Gendo Ikari when this happened. The problem with that plan was that Shinji clearly wasn't allowed close enough to his father at any point to find out anything useful, be any kind of a real threat to his interests. To be able to cut his throat, if he really was in with the faction Kaji had only heard whispers of, the true believers who _wanted _Third Impact, wanted Judgment Day to finish off the human race and take them to heaven or whatever.

Kaworu stood up, dusting off his hands, and Kaji noticed the slowness of his movements. "Gravity getting to you?"

"No." A faint smile, quickly replaced by a frown as he turned, looking past Kaji at the curve of the geofront, at the rows and rows of what Kaji could only call plant cubicles. "It's just a headache."

Kaworu was transparent. Transparently lying. "Want me to rub your neck for you?" Kaji asked, taking the opportunity of lending aid to get into the boy's personal space. This was always fun, and it was much easier to get a read on people when they were surprised or uncomfortable. You got to see how they'd jump.

This one just said, "Thank you for the thought," as though they didn't realize there was anything at all remarkable about Kaji making the offer.

Seriously? Had he never been hit on before? Well, raised on the moon, so everyone there would have been at least twice, more like three times his age (bunch of people with doctorates and years of experience in their field) so maybe not.

"But it's not… that sort of pain," the boy said, with another wince.

"Can't hurt, right?" Kaji said with one of his more dazzling smiles.

And that was how he ended up with sitting there with that silver head in his lap, SEELE's pilot damn near purring like a cat.

Someone _really _needed to teach this boy how to recognize when he was being hit on, Kaji knew, or else he might end up being lured to some stranger's room with the promise of candy. Or backrubs.

* * *

Their angel stood in the center of the monoliths, radiating perfect calm. "It is my nature. An effect of my presence."

"Nothing like this happened on the moon," another member of the committee responded waspishly while Keel simply watched, silent for now.

"That was before I was caught up by the edge of an impact. If I was returned to the moon, something similar would happen there."

Something similar.

The area around NERV recovering was one thing. The media were happy to buy that it had something to do with being the eye of the storm. That human tendency not to look a gift horse in the mouth. The workers who didn't know the truth were happy to move in, to plant that purified area and try to expand it, working around the edges. They were happy to take credit for its expansion, even though this was not their doing. Not something that could be accomplished by the labor of human hands.

Earth had been reset to the environment suitable for the spawn of a Seed of Life. Who could control such a world but a Seed of Life? But Adam's host?

Keel would have been much happier if the boy had tried to deny it. That would have been a sign of guilt. That he knew he was doing something wrong, and then it would simply be a matter of ordering him to stop that. Not to torment the lesser beings with false hope. Not to let humanity survive on his _charity_.

Thanks to the blessings of a god.

Be beholden to a god? No, they would become gods themselves, by their own hands!

But the First Ancestral Race had tried to make sure that their creations would only be angels, not true gods. That they would not dare to control humans, only serve them.

The story of the Great Flood, the doings of Zeus and Odin: imperfect, too-human gods would only oppress mankind, suppress their potential. No, SEELE's goal was to create a perfect being, one worthy of the title of God.

This being in front of his monolith, this tame angel they had created was meant to serve man, made to serve man. Angel of free will? Angels did not possess free will. Only humans did. Angels were crafted to be servants, and could no more change their natures than a leopard could its spots.

Adam's vessel showed no signs of shame or apology. Those would have been red flags, in Keel's eyes. Why should it feel ashamed for simply acting in accordance with its nature? Like the animals.

Like Adam and Eve found no shame in their nakedness, before they ate the forbidden fruit.

"You are tormenting them with false hope," another member said, voicing Keel's thought with tones of deep disapproval.

"I would think that hope was a kindness… but I am aware that my understanding of the Lilim is inferior to your own," Kaworu said with that same serenity. "I fail to see how it harms the Lilim and their true hope, complementation, for them to be spared the pain of starvation. Yes, I am aware that Lilim existence is pain, but is it not my purpose to relieve you of that pain?"

In the eyes of the rest of the committee, yes.

Keel and Gendo Ikari had this in common, he thought to himself. They wanted humanity to attain godhood by its own power. The difference was that Keel wished to exalt _humanity_, while Gendo Ikari would see his brethren's souls destroyed so that only one person could become transcendent.

His viper of a daughter surely knew how to pick them… If only his grandson had inherited his mother's selfishness instead of his father's slavish devotion. If that were the case, Third Impact could have occurred under _controlled _circumstances, and they wouldn't be forced to cobble together some scenario for a _Fourth_.

Extensive testing would be required. _Years _of it.

Humanity's ascension would be delayed for _years_. So close, and then that brat stole it from them, from everyone!

He _deserved _to be hated by the entire world, even if they didn't understand the true reason they should hate him.

The other members of the committee were either hemming and hawing or trying to browbeat the angel into an apology, confirm that they still had it under control. This kind of nonsense was why Keel could be certain he had no real rivals for control over the committee.

Wings, turning in a blue sky… Not white, but banded brown.

A meadow in a mountain's shadow, the smell of grass. Leather, oiled wood, the musky scent of oiled feathers. Sharp talons gripping his leather-padded forearm, the falconer warning him to be careful or he'd wind up missing an eye.

This was a tame angel, but there was no such thing as a tame hawk.

In order to hunt, they had to be set free. There was nothing to stop them from simply leaving. From seeking the blue sky and never returning to captivity.

Thus, it was necessary to convince the animal that it wanted to return. That it wanted the cage enough to put up with the indignities of the bells and jesses.

Even the species used as a symbol of freedom would fly wherever you wanted it to fly, kill whatever the hunter wanted dead. Provided you could convince it that this was its own idea. That it would have the best hunting if it followed your orders.

They would even surrender their fresh kills in exchange for little treats.

The secret to true control was to understand the nature of the animal. To know the way its primitive mind worked, and then simply arrange matters so that nature would make it flow down the channels you had charted out.

Humans, in their current, unrefined state, were just one more kind of primitive, violent animal. The angels might be more powerful, but their creators had worked to ensure that the angels would follow their programming long after their makers were dead and dust. Had carved those channels, those instincts, deep into their minds.

A being that could not understand selfishness could never understand humanity. Knowledge was power. Without knowledge, without free will, how could anyone fail to realize that the being who had obeyed their order to report was no threat to them at all? Wasn't this just more proof that it would do as it was made to do, bade to do?

Beings with godlike power, programmed to use that power to play nursemaid to worlds. To use their power in service to humanity and then to sleep instead of taking their 'rightful' place as gods of their creations. After all, didn't every soul on those worlds owe them their homes, their very lives?

Years spent under observation on the moonbase, powerful enough to simply brush aside the fragile shell that was all that protected the humans there from death, and it had never occurred to the angel to make use of that power. That _threat_. Those around it who knew its true nature were well aware that it could kill them, and even the angel had realized this eventually, but it had never taken advantage of this.

It was the nature of a child to try to control the adults around it. Such an obvious piece of leverage, and the angel had _never _made use of it? When violence was the first resort of so many, the angel had never, not under any pressure, even resorted to the threat of it?

It truly boggled the mind.

Because if the ancients had the technology to create humans without casual cruelty, humans who did not think in terms of destroying and harming others, then _why _hadn't they applied that to the children of the black seed? Millions of wars, murders, countless atrocities and petty cruelties throughout human history. The power existed to change human nature, to make them something greater, something _better_, and it hadn't been used?!

The decision had been made not to give the Lilim the benefit of this knowledge, this invention? The ancestors had allowed their descendants to remain infected with evil, inflicted solitude and suffering upon them? Even if this alteration removed the angel's free will, it wasn't as though the vast majority of the Lilim were doing anything useful with theirs!

This lamb… This lamb, destined for the slaughter. As soon as the time was right to retrieve its killer. For now, it was to their advantage to have Shinji Ikari contained, unable to speak in his defense. There was little risk of any of the truth escaping, but just in case… The same reason Misato Katsuragi was contained after Second Impact.

It seemed they were right: she was the sort to make trouble even when that was not in humanity's best interests. Well, as long as she continued to target Gendo Ikari, she would be useful. Enough to be allowed to live, when it was also proof she didn't know enough of the truth to be harmful

* * *

The thought that she was a fool to be doing this ran through Ritsuko's mind as she opened the e-mail again, but it wasn't as though that was news.

A short message. Her cat had run away.

Before Third Impact, the e-mail would have been full of condolences, but now? Cats were obligate carnivores. They couldn't survive without meat. And meat animals had to be fed. Feeding cows meant that grain wasn't going to people. With food rationing in place? NERV had privileges, but they also had to set a good example. Gendo Ikari had ordered all the employees to get rid of their pets.

No one had found Shinji's cat, but the animal was probably killed either in Third Impact or shortly afterwards. One of the survivors taking their hatred of the Ikari out on an innocent animal.

A bitter twist to her lips: such was humanity. The species she was supposedly protecting. The species Misato wanted her to protect.

Ritsuko's cat was almost certainly dead already. Cats were meat on four paws. There were lots of hungry people out there.

But at least this way, she could imagine her cat was alive somewhere. She wouldn't have to get e-mail after email as her cat starved to death without taurine. She wouldn't be forced to put the one creature that loved her (or at least it was easy to pretend it did, even it was a cat. Easier than with Gendo Ikari) down.

'Your cat is out there somewhere,' that was what she wanted to see when she read this message, even though she knew what it really said was 'Your cat is dead.'

How eager she was to retreat into illusions. Delusions.

She should delete this e-mail. She should leave Gendo. Join Misato. Face reality.

For the sake of her own pride, even if that same rationality told her that it wouldn't make any difference. Any difference at all.

* * *

His birthdate wasn't the real reason Misato didn't trust him.

She didn't trust SEELE's boy because she wasn't an idiot.

What Ritsuko had finally told her about Rei, the Ayanami series? He was too much like Rei, and there was only one Lilith. Even if they didn't have access to the Magi anymore, it stood to reason that angelic souls had to come from angels. If Rei was Lilith, this one had to be Adam.

The one _that _angel had hovered over. The defeated foe.

So it was possible this one was on their side, just like Misato did truly believe that Rei was on their side. It was hard to be fair to her or to Shinji, looking at the devastation.

Another Second Impact.

Misato had failed. Because of Shinji, she'd failed, and it was hard to keep her self-hatred from contaminating everything else. Hard not to hate Ritsuko for not telling her the truth earlier, when she looked down at the red sea.

He might be an angel, but that wasn't the reason she didn't trust SEELE's boy.

She didn't trust him because she wasn't an idiot, and only an idiot would trust _anyone _after what she'd seen. She stood at the foot of a mountain of lies, and what she'd found out felt like the first few pebbles before the avalanche hit.

Even Ritsuko, keeping things like this from her?

She couldn't trust anyone. Especially Kaji.

The only reason she was coming in person was that she'd been promised watermelon. That was the _only _reason. It wasn't to personally confirm that Kaji was still alive or anything.

See? Even she was lying.


	2. Chapter 2

_The method Kaworu and Shinji wanted to use to restore the world safely in Q wouldn't work here. _

_While Kaworu's body contains Adam's soul in this ficverse his real identity is Tabris, and he's not even derived from Adam – entirely different planet of origin, since this 'verse's AU was devised before I read the translated game stuff about how the FAR did their thing fairly recently, to the point that some Seeds were still in transit to their intended planet, as opposed to the terraforming of new worlds having gone on for untold planetary generations, with angels branching out through the universes. _

_The ritual in the movie involved a spear calibrated for Adam and Adam's willing cooperation. The Spear of Cassius isn't calibrated for Tabris, and if the person it is calibrated for did wake up… Yeah, no, Adam in this 'verse would wake up far too maddened to listen to reason regarding his. Goddamn. Planet. _

___The really creepy thing in that game's ending, by the way, was an explanation for why Rei/Lilith and Kaworu/Adam don't remember anything about why they were made and the First Ancestral Race. The S2 engines apparently sap memory/thought/identity. That __means that if Yui Ikari did achieve her goal of becoming a god with an S2 engine and all human knowledge, acquired by destroying all of humanity, all that knowledge and her memory/identity as Yui Ikari would be wiped by the very power she craved._

_The more I think about it, the better engineering it is. Given how it turns out in mythology, you _do not want_ ambitious entities with godlike power when other people don't have equivalent power. Think about how Rei's default is obedience to Gendo Ikari. In the end, all that happens is that instead of going and offering her power to Gendo, she just offers it to Shinji instead. When Kaworu just offered his life up for Shinji's sake. _

_Kaworu looked up at Rei in his death scene and was clearly trying to inspire her to make her own choices instead of following along with Gendo's plans, the way he refused to go along with SEELE's. He wanted her to follow in his footsteps and choose Lilim survival over her own instincts. He wasn't successful: Rei rejected Gendo and chose, sure, but what she chose was to trigger Third Impact. _

_All mainline (manga/anime/Rebuild) versions of Kaworu: phenomenal cosmic power, cannot manage people. Take Rebuild's. Who knows how many timelines of experience, still doesn't realize that of _course _Gendo Ikari will work to screw over anything that would actually help the world. He should have known by now that the whole thing had to be a trap._

_Except he genuinely didn't seem to get that _Gendo Ikari _would do something as dickish as ruin humanity's chance to get its planet back in order to assassinate the only person left capable of blocking Yui's path to godhood. He just really does not get, after all this time, that some people are selfish and evil. If Kaworu doesn't get that by now, after getting hit in the face with it dozens, perhaps even hundreds of times, when he's based on human DNA himself, that's pretty close to proof that someone made sure that he'd never be able to get it. Because in order to anticipate someone's moves you have to be able to think like them, and a being with godlike power thinking like _Gendo Ikari_? Good Cannot Comprehend Evil if someone made sure good was programmed that way._

* * *

This world, bleeding and battered, yet clinging to life so strongly, surviving with such ferocity!

Pain, so much pain, almost every broadcast that slipped past anyone's shields a silent scream, too much to hold back. To keep inside. Crying for help, a cry that would have been answered on any other world since one person's misery quickly became everyone else's problem, but here, where humanity still cowered in fear of the angels? And now in fear of each other, because anyone who opened their ears to hear would be hit with the agony of a world of survivors?

A world of survivor's _guilt_? A world missing their loved ones, a world pulled to join them, a world…

He shouldn't. He mustn't. He _knew _he mustn't. Not because of SEELE's false hope, but because this was _not _his world, it was theirs.

But they cried out for aid, for something, anything, that would either let them survive or grant them sweet death, blessed relief, and he could not shield his heart from those cries. He did not have that power, no more than a planetary human could shield themselves from a meteor strike. Simply decide that they didn't feel like being hit by bullets today, thank you.

And this world was in one of the early stages of terraforming. Earth was already a beautiful world, beautiful enough for angels to fight over, and like this? Just begging for him to run his fingers through her seas, coax forth green and blue and gold.

When that would replace her dying screams with a baby's wails.

He shouldn't even be doing this much. Once he'd done this much, once he'd started? He was already doing something wrong. Already encroaching on a world that was not his, no matter what the reason, and the temptation was there to just give in, to find an excuse to do a little more, and a little more…

Until he was entirely consumed by instinct and forgot minor details like the fact that there were people on this planet that were _not his_. There was biomass on this world that people were _using,_ and even if the Lilim AT field protected them from mental assaults, from the absorption of souls and personalities SEELE envisioned, it wouldn't protect them from a purely physical attack. Like having every cell in their bodies reduced down to LCL.

The makers of angels had based them on humans, and thus their reproduction on how humanity reproduced.

Kaworu was beginning to have the worrying feeling that terraforming Earth 'just a little' was not the equivalent of holding hands or even getting to first base. More like being 'a little bit' pregnant.

The humans who still had hope were praying that the area would expand, that their seas would become blue again, and hearing something, _anything_, that wasn't pain? Hearing that some of Lilith's children still had hope? Still wanted to live, still thought that good things might happen, that this world might be saved? Might even save itself, for their sake?

Build, create, support: it was supposed to be that simple. He wished it were that simple.

There was a way it could be, but Shinji's reaction to the idea of letting Kaworu give in and start terraforming, then killing him before the debugging phrase started (where already-formatted matter that didn't match generated blueprints would be returned to LCL and reformatted) and letting Rei fix any remaining problems was the same as his reaction to the idea of letting Rei just get killed when he could have saved her, no matter what the cost.

Shinji's "Fuck no!" was rather touching, really. Shinji had been raised better than to take the act of sex in vain.

In theory, Kaworu could train another Lilim to do what was necessary. In practice, Shinji didn't have all that much to do right now but keep an eye on Kaworu, and it wasn't as though Kaworu could keep Shinji out of his head. He was on de facto suicide watch, but at least that gave Shinji something to do. A distraction from cursing himself and his parents for what had happened. From cursing his own powerlessness, how he should have used a mental attack on Zeruel even though that would have left people wondering why Zeruel just keeled over and died when Shinji was already on probation for what happened when Bardiel attacked. After Bardiel merged with Asuka and Zeruel took Rei, Shinji couldn't use the more deadly mental attacks on either of them without killing his friends.

Bardiel should not have been able to do that, even given Lilim ignorance of mental combat. The other angel was absolutely insane at the time and that meant he might have come up with something insane and unanticipated, but it would have had to kill Asuka before Asuka got lucky and killed Bardiel. Yet Asuka's sanity was still intact, and she seemed to have the same mind and memories. Asuka was a very combative person. Without razing her mind to the ground, without destroying all of her awareness, all of her reasons for fighting and will to fight, Bardiel shouldn't have been able to pacify her.

Shinji seemed to think that "_It's Asuka_," was explanation enough, and Earth… was an exception to just about every rule of angel-planetary human relations, and yet…

Better yet, why on earth was he looking a gift horse in the mouth? He should be glad that one of Shinji's friends had survived all of this intact. It would have been nice if she annihilated Bardiel as soon as Bardiel tried to invade her mind, true, since Shinji trying to focus on kicking Bardiel out had given his father an excuse to test the dummy plug in actual combat, forcing Shinji to have to focus on defending his mind from his mother _and _the plug, both of which were hooked into his nervous system thanks to the Eva itself and thus in a position to use physical systems to bypass his mental shields.

Pointless to think of this now, but at least it was a distraction from the great cloud of dark thoughts. From being on earth, in range of more of SEELE's supporters. His worshippers. He'd hoped that NERV would mostly be free of such people, but it seemed as though the old men were trying to get as many of their loyal agents into Gendo's domain as possible given the opportunity, which was only sensible of them. Gendo didn't care enough about those who grew his food to have their backgrounds checked, and it made it easier for SEELE to cover up that Kaworu was the real reason NERV could still grow food nourished by the earth.

Even the gardeners who weren't in on the secret had picked up the reverence their fellows had for him.

…At least being worshipped as a life-giving deity, a god of crops and harvests, was better than being worshipped as a bringer of death? For at least some Lilim to pray to _live_, instead of for the release of death?

Still embarrassing. Still a strain. Still so hard not to grant their wishes, not to make of this world a cradle for humanity once again, even though that would kill those who had vested their hopes in him and his 'green thumb.'

When he lived on the moon, he could focus on what he experienced with Shinji, that second life. Now his life was Shinji's second life.

_Kind of you to give me this illusion of mental privacy_, he thought, smiling to himself as his fingers caressed the keys.

A birthday gift.

Oh, it was at least half an offering: his guess was that the gardening maintenance staff had chipped in together to buy it and many of them were in the know.

But the one who asked when his birthday was, when he'd been down here a year and a half and no party? The one who was shocked to find out that he'd never had a birthday party, because who would celebrate the official day of his birth?

The day of Second Impact?

Several months later, he was honestly surprised. Really honestly. He'd sensed the conspiratorial air, but the gardening staff was _always _hiding something from someone. Orders were to stockpile everything for NERV and UN use, but humanitarian and financial interests aligned when it came to creative mislaying of produce. Kaworu was officially on the NERV/SEELE proper payroll, so he was in the category of people who, well, what they didn't officially know wouldn't hurt them.

It wasn't as though they'd impoverished themselves to buy him this. Someone might even have traded it for food outright.

This piano represented Lilim who weren't starving, because of his labor and the labor he made possible. This piano represented the art created by the Lilim, the achievements of their culture. The songs they could only perform if they went on living. If there were people left to hear those songs.

People like those who sat around him now, even as his mind wandered, even as he hoped Shinji was paying more attention to the music than to Kaworu's momentary dark thoughts. He'd worked to cheer Shinji up, make him happy since he was very small, and now Shinji had appointed himself Kaworu's keeper. It seemed less like fair repayment and more like vengeance somehow? When Kaworu didn't _want _anyone to talk him out of sacrificing his life.

"_Tough_."

So much for mental privacy: nothing an angel could do to keep a Lilim out. Yet it brought a smile to his lips, and he was glad that Shinji was someone who cared for his loved ones.

So much better than his father.

Someone like this deserved to survive. No matter what it took.

He didn't need psychic abilities to tell who had just walked in, not when half his audience started to sidle towards the nearest exit. Kaji might not be uptight about the black market, and he might have set up quite a few contacts, but he was still a UN Inspector and since obviously he'd lose his job if he was found to be responsible for tons of missing produce, the people who knew he was on their side hadn't spread that around the entire department. For those not in the know, his entrance was a cue to skedaddle and generally act like they hadn't spent the last hour or so hanging around watching 'Peter Pan' play piano while they were on the clock.

Kaworu was grateful for Kaji's arrival because it was probably the only reason he wasn't getting another lecture from Shinji now about not dying. Kaworu was family, and Shinji didn't care _what _his reason was, because Kaworu was not going to abandon him the way his father and mother had.

Even if he was rarely in two places having two separate conversations these days, Kaworu was still perfectly capable of talking to Kaji and listening to Shinji. Shinji wasn't as good at it, and this was something he wanted to hear.

The piano shifted, just a little (thankfully not a creak) as Kaji leaned against it, nonchalant as ever. He shifted around a little as Kaworu continued to play, but said nothing. Not until Kaworu finished his current song. Holtz's _The Planets _consisted of seven songs which had to be performed one after another. There was a version by the original composer for two pianos, or at least two players, but without Shinji or any other accompaniment Kaworu was forced to improvise quite a lot. Kaji finally moved when the clapping started, as Kaworu shook off Jupiter's joy and steeled himself for Saturn's song of death.

The pat on his shoulder wasn't a brush-pass: no scrap of paper bearing a message was slipped under his shirt.

Angelic hearing had already picked up Kaji placing his message inside the piano.

* * *

"SEELE's boy," was how Misato Katsuragi addressed him.

"My name is Kaworu Nagisa," he said to be polite and introduce himself, even though everyone on this world surely knew his name, considered him the hero when the credit should go to Shinji. "Thank you for arranging this meeting, Misato Katsuragi." Even though Kaworu's control over technology made it easy to sneak out of NERV, he'd still needed transportation to WILLE, or for them to come to him. Technically he didn't need a ride, since he could fly and teleport, but for them to sense an AT field headed towards them would certainly start this off on the wrong foot.

The two and a half years since he (and Shinji) last saw her had not been especially kind. There was a darkness to her, in her eyes and lurking behind her shields.

It was miraculous that someone, anyone, could endure what she had and still carry on. SEELE had locked her away from all human contact until she forgot language, one of the only things the Lilim could use to reach out to others at all. She'd suppressed those memories in order to carry on, and now that she must be trying to remember the truth of Second Impact, anything her captors might have let slip while she was little more than a dumb animal, anything she could use to get vengeance for her father, her world and herself?

It was his intention to be completely honest with her. On a planet where it was so hard to verify that someone was trustworthy, the only way to earn trust was to _be _trustworthy. How could he ask Misato to help him, them, unless he extended trust to her, treated her like a rational adult, someone worthy of trust and respect herself?

The person who stood in front of him was not rational. Not sane, he might have said, except Lilim defined 'sane' as 'functional' and Misato was able to function well enough to take care of not just herself but an entire organization.

It would be a more accurate (and more fair) assessment to say that when it came to certain things, it would be unfair to expect her to be rational.

If he revealed his true nature to her, he was not walking out of here alive. Since dying here and now would accomplish nothing, he could only hope that Kaji didn't volunteer the information during this conversation. It was clear he hadn't told Misato already: hopefully he'd realize that Kaworu had changed his mind and wait until later to ask why.

Lilim ability to read others without telepathy was very impressive when it worked at all instead of causing them to make completely unfounded and inaccurate assumptions about each other. More of the latter type than the former happened at places with an international staff whose members 'spoke' different body languages, like NERV's gardening staff. Still, Kaji was an advanced practitioner of the art, and he was the one to emphasize the importance of breaking this to Misato properly.

Misato did need to know, but Kaworu was going to have to ask Kaji to be the one to tell her.

Preferably while WILLE was on the other side of the planet from NERV.

Surprised that Shinji wasn't commenting, Kaworu's heart fell even further when he realized that Shinji must blame himself for Misato's condition. He might even have… Yes, he had withdrawn from Kaworu's mind.

…There might not be a better chance to discuss certain things, things Shinji wouldn't allow him to say or even think if he was watching over his foster father.

"It was Kaji who did the arranging," Misato said, leaning against the wall with the lamp with the hidden camera. The watchers were… Dr. Akagi, Maya Ibuki and Suzuhara's little sister. He was glad to sense her alive and well: the world's computer records were no longer as comprehensive as they once were, and it wasn't as though he could ask about the whereabouts of someone he shouldn't know existed. The Suzuharas and other children from Shinji's school were long gone by the time Kaworu Nagisa could wander the ruins of Tokyo-3's outer city.

"I hope you like the watermelon," he said while he tried to think of what else to say, how to phrase it to avoid dying now. Shinji was already upset by what happened to Misato: if he looked for Kaworu again and found him dead? If he thought he was responsible for Misato killing him, thought he'd turned her into a murderer?

Perhaps he should wait, for Shinji's sake, and yet even now there were so many Lilim other than Shinji, so many who deserved to live, just as he did.

Her only response to that conversational gambit was an unimpressed look: get on with it.

"How much," has Dr. Akagi told you about – No. "How much do you know about the Ayanami Series?"

"Enough to guess that you were also made in a lab."

He nodded: that was fairly obvious. Surely she could guess more than that, but after considering why she hadn't said anything more, he supposed that it made sense for her not to give away what she knew? What Kaji and Ritsuko might have told her, in case he was loyal to SEELE after all? "Both of us were intended to serve as secondary defenses," second AT fields, "and power sources," S2 engines, "for the Evas. But both Gendo Ikari and SEELE had what they thought were greater purposes for our creation."

Black and slick, a teardrop shape: he could have sprouted the seeds inside the watermelon they'd brought with them, but that might have ruined it as they sent their roots throughout the fruit's flesh. "I would rather serve this purpose," he said, showing them the seed in his palm.

This watermelon sprout's roots curled around his hand, dug into his flesh: it took merely a twist of will to turn his blood to LCL and thence to food for the plant. The primordial soup, the building blocks of life.

Maya gasped, but Misato didn't: her eyes just narrowed, looking at him and glancing at Kaji. Did he really think someone with clearly inhuman powers was trustworthy?

Since no one actually said anything, Kaworu continued, saying "I could repair the area around Tokyo-3's ruins safely, but any more than that, and I might…No, I will lose control before it's complete. I would like to try, but I will need help. And someone to kill me at the proper moment. It would have to be after I've lost control, but before anyone is hurt." It occurred to him that using the word 'hurt' to describe being turned to LCL without one's mental data transcribed or soul stored was a disingenuous understatement. That was _killed_, not hurt. "The person who made this world one that would support you is Lilith: her soul dwells within Rei. The Rei you knew. If she's recovered safely, I think she might be able to finish whatever I can't, without harming anyone." Once she was trained, but Shinji was using what he found in Kaworu's memories to teach her.

Bonding with his sister helped keep him… not distracted, but give him something to do besides looking down at the ruined world and seeing the people responsible (other than himself) through Kaworu's eyes.

Out of the corners of those eyes, Kaworu could see Misato glancing at Ritsuko. For what? To see if WILLE's equipment was detecting an AT field? It wouldn't now when Kaworu was using so little power, and most of it on his own body and something right outside of it. If their equipment detected any time anyone used the light of the soul, having Lilim inside WILLE would set it off constantly. Even if this world's humans used their souls for very little, the fact they weren't trained meant their use was unconscious and uncontrolled, while Kaworu was trying to do this quietly, without giving off too much power.

Since this world's angel-related technology was not only early but deliberately crippled by SEELE and NERV? Of course, Dr. Akagi was one of those doing the crippling: what might she have devised now that she no longer cared about how it was in Gendo Ikari's best interests for angels in human form to go undetected?

From the way Ritsuko was looking back at Misato, Ritsuko knew what he was (that he was an angel, at least), and knew Misato knew, and wanted to know what her friend was looking at her for.

Misato frowned a little, before nodding to acknowledge Ritsuko's point. "You're not hu-_Lilim_," she reminded herself, "but if we were killing people just for that, we'd have to start with Asuka."

"Asuka?" Kaworu asked, startled, and even though he should be taking advantage of this opportunity he still reached out mentally and grabbed Shinji by the scruff of the neck, because this was something he would want to know.

Shinji had set off Third Impact, even with the best of reasons, Rei had been revived and killed by Gendo twice now since then, trying to destroy her personality and capacity to be someone other than Yui (fortunately Shinji and Kaworu were both storing backup data for her) and now Asuka?

What next, would Misato…

Misato had been tortured by locking her away from all positive contact with other humans for years. The same thing that had inadvertently driven the other angels insane.

There was no one among Shinji's small circle at NERV who hadn't suffered because of him, was there? No one on this broken world.


	3. Chapter 3

Until now, as he walked down the halls of WILLE because his outburst of concern for Asuka had raised questions in Misato, Ritsuko and Kaji's eyes and they'd decided that having them answered would be worth taking him to meet Asuka, it had not really occurred to him that he and Asuka hadn't been formally introduced at any point.

He hadn't interacted with the Second Child the way he had with the Third. While the Third was a victim of not at all benign seeming-neglect, the Second Child had fought to keep herself at the center of attention. Fought the world. Shinji had been too grateful for any friend at all to demand answers until he was old enough to be responsible with them. Asuka would have crowed that a talking cat coming to her was a sign of how special she was, expected him to prove her right when other people doubted her words and demanded answers when he didn't. He might not have a very good understanding of planetary humans, even after years more experience with them, but it had been obvious just from keeping an eye on her that dealing with the Second Child would have been… exhausting, and dealing with SEELE and their beliefs was already more than enough strain. His friendship with the young Shinji was one of the joys that let him get through those days, Shinji and music: Asuka might have been one more thing to endure and that would not have been fair to her.

So, while he knew her fairly well, or at least knew more of her than could come from reading others' reports, Asuka and her friends would know that he was not even her acquaintance. He would have to be careful to avoid familiarity.

When he had arrived at NERV, when they might have attended sync tests together, or passed in the halls, she had been in another facility's hospital. After she was returned, she had looked at him with hard eyes (impossible to tell one was artificial without some sort of scan, and both politeness and survival mandated against scanning planetary humans without permission) and even over the din of a world not allowed to forget that it was dying… No, he hadn't needed to hear her anger, that he was there that day and she wasn't.

He thought it was that part of her wanted to believe that if she'd been there, she could have stopped it, stopped Zeruel before things got to the point they did. So if he had failed where she would have succeeded, then was not his failure, coming too late, the reason so many people were dead?

Lilith was still the administrator of Earth's biosphere. Her soul could not be allowed to pass from this world. Once Zeruel had begun to devour her _some _form of 'Impact' was inevitable. Without knowledge, without training, how could Asuka have recovered that all-important soul without even more damage to the planet?

Or would she have simply let Rei die… When all of Earth would have died with her? NERV and SEELE might know the importance of Lilith, might have built backup bodies for both her and Adam (like the one Tabris had possessed, only to find it already occupied), but Zeruel in his fury would have dragged Lilith away from this world with him.

With Zeruel died all the children Zeruel would have created. With Zeruel died an entire _world_. So why should Lilith's be spared?

The 'angel of might' SEELE's prophecies called him, and yes, as much as Tabris hated to admit that there was anything to their death-worshipping superstition, the title was apt. Angels were _not meant _to wage war… Unless their worlds were under attack.

In his confusion and madness… the others had tried to reach their goals, clutching with disoriented minds at hope of repair, survival. As he went mad over the billions of years of his sealing, had Zeruel imagined a world in that orb? And then when SEELE's explosion broke their seals and released them…

First learning that there might be something wrong with Asuka, and now this. It almost surprised him that he could come across something that made him feel even guiltier, and now twice in one day…

Should he have realized that they would fight being sealed into slumber? He had been willing for the Lilim to develop launch capacity himself: even with their handicaps, it had taken them far less time than the angels had spent bickering over this planet. They had already wasted _so much time_, enough time for half of them to get sick of it enough to just leave the solar system, even without a carrier.

Was that why those he had sealed were so stubborn, staying awake and fighting the seals hopelessly even as it destroyed their minds? Because if they weren't that stubborn, they would have left already? Just let Lilith have this world, for Life's sake: there were plenty of other planets in space. Principle of the thing? There was no principle of the thing! Just a technicality that had never been resolved one way or another because it had never come up! Yes, Lilith was the one who had behaved the worst out of all of them, and yes it rankled to let her have such a gem of a world, but were they planetary humans, to squabble over territory? When that did nothing but delay the day they would have their own worlds, and their own children?

Now that day would never come for Zeruel, at least not in this incarnation. How far did the souls who left Earth have to travel, to find another place to incarnate? This place was the edge of a spiral arm, but for two carriers to arrive here almost simultaneously, in astronomic time?

No, that was simply chance, or bad luck: clearly this sector of space hadn't been developed, or else the Lilim would have picked up something before now. They were listening, even before Second Impact. Listening even more closely now, since both they and the enemy had originally came from space. One more project SEELE controlled, that allowed them to monopolize the world's best and brightest, keep them focused on tasks that would not help the Lilim survive.

He was honestly surprised they allowed something like WILLE to exist, he thought as he followed Ritsuko down echoing metal corridors that reminded him of NERV to a surprising degree. Why echo that place when they sought to overthrow it? Did they simply not have the budget to make statements? When art was how Lilim, how every culture, defined themselves? Reminded themselves of who they were?

"_Of course he let Misato go_," Shinji said. "_And Ritsuko_. _He wanted them to fail_."

How could they possibly restore the blue sea when they were determined to destroy all angels and angel-based technology, like the Evas?

Silence from Shinji, tinged with suspicion more than anything. It was clear he had a guess, but didn't want to share it. Didn't want to acknowledge its existence, but was still glumly certain that either he was right or things were even worse than he had guessed.

Tabris wished he could cheer him up, but "_Don't you dare," _came Shinji's thought, digging into his skull viciously enough he winced. "_Don't you dare. When you were telling her to kill you, when you still want to die and leave me and my sister alone to fend for ourselves when I'm stuck like this and he keeps killing her… Don't you dare try to make me feel better! If you cared about how I felt, you,_" and that was when Shinji cut himself off with the echo of an "_Aargh!"_ because he knew Tabris cared, the angel just hated himself for being the reason Shinji was in this position in the first place "_and no you're not, it's my father and those SEELE bastards' faults! If you're just going to think of stupid things, then stop thinking!"_

Perhaps Shinji would have been a little less easily irritated if his physical body was able to mature past his current age, especially trapped as data within an Eva's immortal flesh. Or perhaps Tabris was just that irritating currently. He tried not to be, but he really was the closest thing to an adult Shinji and Rei had to rely on, and he was doing a terrible job.

"You alright?" Kaji asked, having noticed the wince. He had kept pace with Kaworu as they walked through WILLE, a little behind and to the left, and Kaworu wondered why that position. Shinji had thought of it as perfect for a dagger in the back – to the right would be better for guarding someone's back – even though Kaji was an ally.

Not that Shinji trusted adults. Perhaps Kaji's joking air was enough like a father yielding to the temptation to 'troll' his sons to rub Shinji the wrong way on top of that? Even if Kaji's jokes about seduction, and giving Kaworu the talk were just that, the agent knew well how valuable it was to make himself well-liked.

If anything, he'd only gotten more so after discovering that Kaworu was an angel. Since Kaji didn't know about the capabilities of planetary humans, as far as he knew the only way to prevent the angel from killing him if he felt like it was to make sure he couldn't feel like it.

Emotional manipulation rather than offensive mind control, but still, Kaji had good instincts. A physical AT field was useless if the combat wasn't physical.

"_He just wants to use you_," Shinji half-growled again.

"_Yes_?" Wasn't that the idea? To make himself useful to these people, Shinji's kind, so they would let him help them repair their world?

The feeling of Shinji crouching over him protectively, because Tabris was too nice, too self-sacrificing, and if these people knew what Tabris was, either his nature or his personality, they'd want to take him away. What if Tabris had come to Kaji instead of Shinji, all those years ago? Decided to help him instead? Until he met Rei, Shinji hadn't had any family worth having except Tabris. Kaji trying to win Kaworu over? He wasn't trying to win him away from Shinji, but Tabris could feel the growl when Kaji responded to Tabris saying "I'm fine," by patting him on the head, putting his fingers in silver hair.

Tabris appreciated it, but had to wonder if this was really the time until he heard Misato's slight indrawn breath.

Kaji was actually _touching _the probably-angel, someone bioengineered to control other living things like the watermelon plant at the absolute minimum (and where would SEELE have gotten something like that if not from angelic DNA) without a trace of fear? Just a smile, one that said 'I know you're bullshitting me but I'm not going to call you on it,' because failing to admit to pain, hiding weakness, was sometimes considered a virtue among the Lilim, something admirable instead of deceitful.

That he was just amused by Kaworu lying to him: that itself meant a degree of trust? Or at least the pretense of trust. Kaji knew Kaworu got random headaches. He'd gotten one the first time they met. Tabris wondered what Kaji thought caused the headaches. Lilim were often subject to random pains, but SEELE's creation? An angel? Knowing Kaji, he would have wanted an answer (the angels had a weakness? Was it something Misato could use?) if he didn't think he already had one.

"Want me to take those?" was what Kaji asked instead, gesturing at the bag of watermelons Kaworu was carrying. The plant he grew had borne fruit, and while Ritsuko had claimed one for analysis (and herself) odds were that the Lilim would judge the opportunity for _real _food to be worth the risk of ingesting something grown by an angel.

Given Kaji's comments to Misato, about how much Kaworu had done to help the farmers in the Geofront, they may already have eaten something he helped grow and decided that if Kaworu had tampered with it they were already doomed (along with far too much of the world) so why not.

Eat, drink and be merry.

If only that sentiment was born of enjoyment of life and its pleasures rather than passive acceptance of probable death. Oh, they might be watching, hoping for a chance to survive, but they knew that death was the default. That unless they got _lucky_, this world would die. For that was this world's destiny, unless they could change it, when in fact "It was never supposed to be this way," he found himself whispering.

And winced again, feeling Shinji's anger. A slip like that?

He had to be strong for him, and Rei. _Had _to be. He was in enemy territory: with Shinji to protect his mind he probably could get out of here alive, but with his nature still a secret? With any chance of an alliance with WILLE against SEELE (was the similarity of the names deliberate?) intact?

"Hey, what SEELE and Gendo Ikari've managed to pull off isn't your fault," Kaji said, and Tabris appreciated the quick save. Much better to have them think he only blamed himself for failing to arrive in time to stop Third Impact. For being created by and serving (until he realized the truth, presumably) an organization like SEELE.

He wanted to lean up into that hand, wanted to discard thought and simply be a cat for a bit, but now was not the time. Even if it was the stress of this time that made him want it.

"There are two of them in there," a female voice said, and Kaji and Tabris turned to see a plugsuited woman standing there.

"Are either of them human?" was what Misato wanted to know.

"No," Asuka said bluntly, as her eye dimmed, no longer glowing green. "One of them's familiar."

"This body was created as a vessel for… the most powerful of the beings found in Antarctica," Kaworu said, knowing they would recognize he meant the Katsuragi expedition. "Until the time SEELE planned for it to awaken again, in accordance with their planned scenario for the absorption of the Lilim into a mass mind. It sleeps still: my soul is my own." But hers…

"It's you that pisses me off," she told him, her only visible eye narrowing. "What do you think you're looking at?"

Why was there pity and sadness in his eyes when he looked at her, when he should be worried about himself? Especially if he was Kaji's pet, when she hadn't seen the man in months.

"…Bardiel," he said sadly, because he was too caught up in mourning to remember the importance of _lying_.

Shinji might have caught him if he hadn't seen the truth through Tabris' eyes: his fury at Tabris (could he stop trying to get himself killed?!) didn't diminish his fury at himself.

"That _was _the angel's name," Asuka said, showing her teeth. "So, they know that much? Yeah: that angel took over my Eva and my body dissolved. I got it back by taking him over."

"Only one soul dwells within your breast," he told her, with sadness. He was expecting denial: even the backhand he accepted as his due, although he was surprised by the reason.

"Geez! What's a pretty boy like you doing talking about breasts, and an angel on top of that! And it's like the Contact Experiments. Or did they not tell you about those?"

"They did," he said, and he knew Misato and Ritsuko would have noticed that there was no mark on his cheek despite the crack of the impact, how it had forced him to take a step back. "Which would you say is the true vessel of Kyoko Shikinami?" he asked, knowing the question was a trap. "The Eva which holds her soul, or the body that contained her mind and memories, but not her soul?"

"My Eva!" she said proudly.

"Then you are not Asuka," he said, sad and gentle. "You hold her memories, just like Kyoko Shikinami's body still contained the memories that shaped her personality, but the soul of the Asuka Shinji knew is not here. The Contact Experiments took place because the Evas did not already have souls. That Asuka's personality overwhelmed Bardiel's fragmented madness in the merge, that I can believe," when Asuka was a planetary human, when Bardiel would have wanted the parts of her memories that contained her skill as an Eva pilot, had invited his own destruction by merging with her, "but when the merge was ended, the stronger of the two souls was the one to remain in the vessel. It's the same as how once Adam's soul awakens, mine will be cast out. Or worse." Adam was _furious_. "A pla-a human's soul can be reconfigured into an angel's, but Shinji knew the pattern of your soul, and Adam recognizes Bardiel's." There was no mistake. "I'm sorry."

Her eye narrowed at him, but he could still see her inner certainty past her pale eyelashes. Her certainty that he was insane, stupid or both, and who but someone very stupid would try to convince someone that they were dead?

"_Misato thinks you're trying to turn WILLE against Asuka so they lose _their_ tame angel, while NERV and SEELE still have theirs." _Rei and Kaworu, even if neither of them were as tame as their 'masters' wished_. "Or, if you are telling the truth, you're trying to wake up Bardiel in order to turn him against WILLE," _Shinji said, upset almost to the point of crying instead of shouting because, _"They're not going to believe that you really were just clueless enough not to realize how this looks!" _

They would think that he had to be an enemy, and making his move now, because no ally would do something like this and even a neutral or subtle enemy wouldn't be stupid enough to try to pull something like this unless they didn't care about fooling WILLE anymore.

Oh dear.

He really should have let Kaji handle all the contact with WILLE, shouldn't he. Even if Tabris had hoped that meeting Misato would cheer Shinji up. Seeing that she wasn't dead with his own eyes, or Tabris' at least. An imposter wouldn't have Misato's soul.

Gendo and SEELE were capable of such convoluted plots, while remembering to think of how Lilim would perceive things before he said them was still much, much worse than rocket science to Tabris.

SEELE he could manage… a little, or at least he hoped so, but that was the dint of long practice more than anything. Single-mindedness was advantageous for an angel normally, but focus on the task at hand was _not _good for handling conversations with Lilim. He'd had to train himself to think about what he was doing, remember all his deceptions, whenever he saw a monolith, SEELE's emblem on equipment and ID's scattered around the moonbase, NERV's emblem… But even if this place still made him feel too much as though he was still on that base, still in the hands of that sort of people (when these people were originally from NERV), his grief for Asuka had made him forget the lie.

"He's not… lying," Asuka said slowly, her own honesty forcing the words past her lips. Even though her own eye held Kaworu's red ones pinned, he knew that she wasn't speaking to him, but to Misato and Ritsuko. "Not about this, anyway. He lies all the time."

Tabris wanted to protest that no, he was _not _habitually deceptive: lies required making up stories, thinking of what the victim would believe, and how could Asuka accuse him of being _good _at that when he had just failed so terribly… Except she hadn't accused him of being a skilled liar, had she? And he _was_ lying, all the time. Not just to SEELE, but lies of omission to those who thought him a Lilim.

In fact… She'd just checked his emotional radiation. She'd found his guilt, over all the lies he had told, but the most dangerous liars among the Lilim, like all the core members of SEELE, felt absolutely no guilt when they lied.

He hoped that Bardiel wasn't trying to use his ability to see the Lilim emotions that leaked past their shields to help WILLE find potential infiltrators. Mere empathy was surprisingly little help against Lilim skilled enough to deceive people like Misato and the other members of WILLE. Asuka offering 'certainty' might give them overconfidence in some of the wrong people.

"He's an _idiot_," Asuka said finally. "Even more stupid than Shinji." When Shinji was the one who set off Third Impact. "What the hell are you smiling about?" she demanded, seeing the corner of Kaworu's mouth twitch upwards.

"I resemble that remark is the phrase, I think." Although no, he shouldn't add that it was a pleasure to be compared to Shinji, much less a relief.

He found himself wanting to ask if there was any particular reason Asuka had compared him to Shinji specifically. Was there some resemblance between them? They weren't related by blood, but perhaps Asuka had spotted some mannerism? He had raised the young human. Any behavior patterns of his that Shinji might have imitated wouldn't be proper Lilim ones, so he had tried to help Shinji make friends with the other children so he would be properly socialized, yet even if he did manage to fix this world, he did _not _want to fill it with his children.

So Shinji, Tsukiyomi, and perhaps Rei now: they were all of him that might go on into the future. Oh, restoring this world so the Lilim could go on would be a service to life, but they weren't _his _children.

Any more than the Lilim were Bardiel's, and yet he could see the aura before him trying to shape patterns of energy. Patterns that might have served Asuka well, when she imposed her will on Bardiel, but an angel's soul couldn't shape its light that way.

She bared her fangs at him, but did not know enough of the powers of planetary humans and angels to see that she was toothless. At least when it came to mental combat. The fangs and claws Asuka must have dredged up out of ancient memory to turn on Bardiel had been _Asuka's_. She might as well have tried to threaten him with a sword without a hilt, or an unloaded gun.

Strange that Bardiel was the _least _dangerous person in WILLE, at least to him, Tabris thought, and hoped it didn't show on his face. With Bardiel's memories wiped, 'Asuka' would have no training in how to use her powers. He might even be able to subdue her before any of WILLE's Lilim were hurt in the crossfire. Not that he _would _handle her personally, of course: he could feel that Shinji wasn't adverse to killing the damn thing that killed Asuka a second time.

"Wipe that damn smile off your face," she said, speaking to him now.

A moment's panic reflection let him ascertain that smile was only the placeholder smile he wore when dealing with SEELE and now NERV, to conceal his thoughts. If she'd seen in his face that he didn't regard her as a threat, and thought he found that _amusing_, his chances of avoiding a fight got even worse. Shinji could deal with Asuka, but the assumption would be that Kaworu had, and if the angel – if _Adam's host_ – attacked a member of WILLE, guns would be drawn and alarm buttons would be pressed.

And if the alarms didn't sound, or Misato's bullets pinged harmlessly off an AT field? His charade would be over.

It wouldn't just be a matter of WILLE (and soon the rest of the world) having absolute proof he wasn't a Lilim. SEELE would want to know what the heck he was doing at WILLE.

"_Tell them Kaji lured you with Chopin cds," _Shinji suggested, and the image of a mousetrap baited with a stack of silver discs forced Kaworu to laugh.

Fortunately it was much closer to a giggle, the startled and relieved laugh of someone who had really not been expecting it, than any sort of villian's laugh.

"And now you're laughing at us?" Misato asked, hard-eyed and tapping a finger against her gun.

"There were three of them," Asuka reported. "He's talking to someone_." _

"_You did that on purpose to make me laugh,_" Kaworu knew, although it was hard to muster any feeling of accusation to go with the thought. He really had no idea why Shinji would do something like that, especially now, but even if things might still go straight to hell _he _felt a little better, both for the comic relief and the reminder of music. "Kaji has been telling me of how some Lilim will lure trusting children with candy. The person I am talking to suggested I claim I was lured here with classical music, if questioned by SEELE."

"Shinji, right?" Kaji asked. Kaworu turned his head to look at him, startled, and Kaji's smirk deepened. The Lilim was well aware he'd nailed it. "He's the one you're talking to when you get those headaches, isn't he?"

"…It's not Shinji's fault," was all Kaworu could say to that. "Even when he's angry at me, it's not like he's hurting me on purpose." Shinji was too kind a soul to do that, unless you were an angel or member of SEELE. "Most of the time it's really not pain, either. Simply regret."

"Do we have anything to worry about?" Kaji said, which would have puzzled Kaworu if he hadn't felt Kaji specifically _not _glancing at Asuka.

"Bardiel was an angel," although these Lilim wouldn't know that was a reason _not _to worry in this case, "and mad. There is no chance he could recover his mind from Asuka."

"So nothing's going to happen to _Asuka_?" The emphasis was because Kaworu was digging himself in deeper, and had better refer to her as Asuka from now on, because even Kaji could only perform so many miracles per day.

"…I would… _like_ to say that she is safe and should not go mad, but none of… those with those souls should have gone mad to begin with. I suppose she is as safe as anyone on this world." Safer, with a physical AT field?

Misato and Ritsuko saw red eyes blink confusedly up at Kaji (annoyingly handsome with his stubbled chin) and found themselves remembering Rei. Why did SEELE's Boy show emotion so much more than she had? It wasn't the years of relative freedom on the ground: he'd been expressive even when he landed, during the debriefing. Regret he hadn't arrived sooner (even though the logs showed he'd requested the launch several times before finally being allowed), self-blame, mourning for the dead, determination to do what he could and even managing smiles for the cameras, when NERV and SEELE tried to bill him as the hero of the hour. Tried to spin survival as something to celebrate, something the world owed to SEELE and their cutting-edge, illegal-within-UN-jurisdiction research?

When Ritsuko finally told Misato the truth (fortified with lots of alcohol, turning a picture of her probably-dead cat over and over in her hands since Misato had her laptop, looking through the files she'd absconded with from NERV) she hadn't been _certain_ SEELE's Boy was an angel like Rei, even if Rei wasn't the same type as the other angels. It was possible the albinism was a side-effect of the cloning technology, not necessarily a sign of angel DNA. Rei had _blue _hair: Nagisa's pale gray was at least humanly possible. Probably. How expressive Nagisa was relative to the Ayanami Series might even be an indication that all his DNA was human, if Rei's inability to act like a normal person was because of her angelic component.

But when off-guard, off-balance, removed from the environs of NERV and SEELE and faced with surprises like Asuka? Kaworu became proof of the maxim that it was better to remain silent and be thought an idiot than open your mouth and prove that you were.

He was far more _talkative _now than even during the interviews: had he learned caution and paranoia on SEELE's moonbase?

Rei hiding her emotions and not speaking much meant a lesser chance of displaying _inhuman _emotion or saying things that no normal person would say. Her quiet was odd, as were a surprising percentage of the few statements she made, in hindsight, but they were so few and far between that they were easier to ignore? Whereas Nagisa was giving them sign after sign that something was rotten in the independent state of Tagatha Moonbase.

Not that this was news. SEELE had wanted Ritsuko transferred up there.

Misato wished she was a little less certain that Gendo agreeing to this was the real reason her friend was here, the straw that broke the camel's back when even _Third Impact _left her undecided. "So you and Shinji were connected during Third Impact?" When Shinji had merged with another angel and sucked up far too much of the world.

"No," Kaworu said, shaking his head. "I have looked after Shinji since he was a child. That's how I first met all of you, except." He clearly swallowed whatever he was about to say next, but the glance at Asuka gave it away. He might have met Asuka before, but he hadn't met _this _person? "Sorry," he said to all of them. "I should…" He put the bag of watermelons down on the ground and held his arms in front of him, not quite folding them but holding his forearms a little ways away from his chest. Almost as though he was holding something.

Then he was.

"Tabby-cat," he explained, "was the name Shinji gave me. My original name was-"

And that was when Asuka's fist hit his face. "You pervert!"

She'd let that cat sleep in her room! She'd _changed _with that cat in her room!

* * *

_This is the last chapter that was originally posted in _The Cat Who Walks Through Walls _before being taken down from there and posted here. Next chapter'll be up in a few days._


	4. Chapter 4

_Regarding the standard/stereotypical Asuka joke at the end of the last chapter: that was the point._

_This isn't Asuka. This is someone who isn't naturally like Asuka that got hacked and a copy of Asuka's personality installed. A heck of a lot of data was lost in the transfer. _

_Picture an Asuka figure, something three-dimensional. Have someone take a photo of that figure and print it out on paper that already had a (long-faded) image on it. You go from 3-d to 2-d, and the parts that survive best are the most intense parts, the brilliantly colored emotions. 2.0!Asuka is a lot more mature/less of a jerkass to people around her than Anime!Asuka. That's maturity, restraint of emotion, thinking about the feelings of other people... advanced theory of mind, when angels by default suck at dealing with other people. _

* * *

"Getting along with Lilim," he said, restraining a sigh as he sat down on the faded blue couch, "is much easier when I'm not expected to speak."

"Just cuddle and purr," Kaji agreed, passing him a cup of water. Tabris had turned down an ice pack, but then the black eye he should have been developing wasn't showing up, and the bruise should have been pretty noticeable on that pale skin.

Even though he'd let Asuka hit him instead of raising his AT field, it still hadn't done any damage? Or was it just that the damage was quickly healed.

Checking over his face served two purposes: it let him try to get a little more information on the angel, how he was put together (how it might be possible to take him apart, or not) and it also showed concern. Most people had more than a little 'what do you think you're doing?' about some man coming into their personal space, but the other reason someone might want to put their hands on such a pretty young man didn't seem to occur to the angel. Or he knew he was in absolutely no danger of some pervert doing anything to him and admired Kaji's balls for bossing around the angel instead of trying to stay out of range of possession or tentacles or what have you.

Kaworu nodded once Kaji let go of his chin. "Lilim – all planetary humans – hunger for physical contact. Words are a terrible method of communication to begin with, but they assign all sorts of meanings and read ulterior motives into another Lilim, or someone they think is a Lilim, wishing to be close to them. It's much easier to help them feel cared for as a cat."

"_Yeah_," Kaji drawled, "A lot easier to get into their beds, too. Asuka _and _Misato?" Not that Kaji had that much trouble getting into Misato's bed, but he might have made a joke about having a taste for older women if Ritsuko wasn't in earshot, keeping her own eyes on the angel.

"And… oh." Tabris did sigh now. "That's just it: people would have read things into it if I snuggled with people or licked them in human form."

Since Kaji seriously doubted Ritsuko hadn't picked up and pet Shinji's kitty at some point, he wanted to nod and reminisce about how fun it was to lick her and Misato, but he liked breathing. "But you and Shinji did talk?" Lonely little kid, a magical talking animal coming into his life, wanting to be _his _friend… Something out of a fairy tale. Fairy godmother or something. Puss in Boots, or Puss in Plugsuit, anyway.

When Shinji's father hadn't cared to leave him any inheritance. Nothing for the next generation, just the end of the world.

Tabris nodded as Misato came in to what looked like a break room, even if it wasn't much of one. Just a few plastic chairs, a threadbare couch, a sink and some mostly-empty cupboards. "I knew that he would be a pilot: it was part of the prophecies SEELE holds so dear. Their scenario doesn't require his survival, but Gendo Ikari wished for his son to be broken so his Eva's spirit could easily take control in combat, and SEELE wishes for humanity to become a mass mind, to be _willing _to surrender life and individuality. If Shinji Ikari possessed the will and determination to live, to reject complementation… they would not expect that. That would bar one of their possible paths to victory, and I hoped that if he was trained, if he understood the nature of angels, he would be better able to bar _their_ path. NERV and SEELE both made their plans for defense without _any _understanding, any at all, of the true nature of angels or the AT field. They didn't _want _to understand the truth, not when that would mean admitting that their beliefs are simply not true, and the heaven they strive for does not exist. For their willful ignorance, their dogma to destroy a world that has already suffered so much by crippling its defenders… Teaching Shinji was something I could do."

"Fat lot of good that did," Kaji said before Misato or Ritsuko could say anything, because Misato's lips were already a hard, flat, angry line, and her eyes were bitter, full of old anger and unspoken venom.

"He had to save Rei," Tabris told them. "He had to. It isn't just that she is his sister, and to abandon her would make him like Gendo. Rei holds _Lilith's soul_. If Lilith's soul departs this world, all the Lilim, all life on this world, will collapse. An angel is the foundation of the world they create. Once Zeruel absorbed Lilith, Third Impact was inevitable. It's unfair for you to blame Shinji for those who died, when he's the only reason any of you still live!"

Challenge there in those red eyes, the desire to force them to admit that they were being unfair to Shinji, when this kid (angel or not, a kid was a kid) cared about the other pilot. "Blame Gendo Ikari for sending the mother of your world into harm's way," he told them. "But to blame Shinji for doing whatever it took to save her, and her children with her? Do you wish that you had died that day? Many do," he told them, looking down at the chipped mug full of water. "This world… SEELE wishes for everyone on it to long for death, to be broken the way they wanted Shinji broken. I have to wonder sometimes if the hatred of Shinji I feel from the Lilim is really because they think him responsible for their dead loved ones, or if they know on some level that Shinji is the reason they are alive. If they hate him for saving them, for sparing them, for being the reason they didn't follow the rest of the world into death."

He took a deep breath, trying to regain some calm. Misato hoped he'd fail: it was easier to extract information from someone who was off-balance. She wished Kaji hadn't given him that water. Kaworu seemed to be using it as a talisman more than anything else. He hadn't drank any of it, but he hadn't put the mug down, either. Gripping it to steady himself, looking down at the water.

Water.

If she hadn't spent the last two years with Asuka, Misato might just have thought it was a property of angels, at least humanoid angels. Ritsuko had described Rei as made up of light and water, gripping a mug of moonshine the way Kaworu held this water now.

Rei might have blue hair, the angel she'd seen that day might have had a tail like an eel's, but Asuka was a flame.

Two souls, according to Asuka. And the one like Rei's was _not _the one in control. The being that had imprisoned Adam at the south pole was the angel that had unleashed all the others on them, the angel that had destroyed half the world when it woke up… When it woke up because of _her_.

Her father was dead, so many people were dead, all of this had started because of _her. _Just like Third Impact was Shinji's fault (or was it hers, for sending him out there even when she should have _known_ that NERV was rotten to the core?)… No, she _knew _it wasn't really Shinji's fault, that he was being held up as a scapegoat, that this was what Gendo Ikari and SEELE _wanted _everyone to think.

She had to remember the boy who had shown up that day with his cat on his shoulder (a shoulder angel, how ridiculous in hindsight), who had cleaned up her place and made food for anyone who would hold still long enough to take a bento box and genuinely liked looking after people. Someone like that, she could imagine the boy in her memories risking the fate of the world to save one person, but how could he have known that doing that would trigger Third Impact?

Except he might have known.

Except this angel might have told him to do that in order to save another angel. Putting another member of his own kind over the world? Except if he really had helped train Shinji to fight the others? Except he didn't seem to expect Asuka to be on _his _side, even after calling her Bardiel?

The angel at the south pole had imprisoned all the others, including Adam. All the others except Lilith, who remained in Japan, who got to have this world for herself and her children. Was it Lilith's ally?

Water, and hair like ice, and the skillful way he'd wielded that spear, knowing exactly how to strike to shut down Third Impact without killing either Rei or Shinji or harming the Eva. Instead, they were sealed into stasis. Just like the other angels at the south pole.

She should have gotten Asuka, confided her suspicions in her own angel. Had her look for additional evidence.

Gotten some _backup_ that didn't need an Eva to use an AT field.

Yet that mingled sense of youth and agelessness. The certainty that here was something alien, yet also human. Wrongness mingled with rightness, as though the same part of her that catalogued all the signs that this wasn't a hu-a Lilim also recognized those signs, knew that they were right for whatever this was.

Even though the thing that floated, there in the crystalline ice, was strange and a stranger to little Misato, when she felt it wake up it had seemed impossible that it might hurt her. That gentle calm, not like the ocean's depths but a clear pool. Controlled. Manmade?

Kaworu didn't have the same feel in that regard, at least. He radiated a quiet desperation, _trying_ to be calm, to keep it together at least on the outside, but as lost as anyone behind that façade. It was the most human part of him. Suggesting they use him as a terraformer and then kill him? Was he really grasping at straws like the rest of them? Was he really willing to die to save this world? To save the Lilim?

The Children of Lilith.

"_Be well, child of Lilith_."

None of the other angels cared about – none of the other angels even _noticed _people, except as obstacles. Even Rei cared so little for human life that she wasn't even trying to protect her own, just staying there and letting Gendo Ikari do what he wanted to Rei after Rei.

There was true concern in Kaworu's face as he looked down at the water as though it might hold some answers. As though he'd look anywhere to find a way to save Shinji.

There hadn't been concern in the mind that brushed against hers, leaving behind feelings like pale watercolors that were washed away without sinking in, without staining her mind. Just faith that she _would _be well. Happiness on her behalf, because she had so much to look forward to. A glorious future. Touching the stars.

That angel had cared for her, or done a good imitation of it, but there had been no concern, no fear in that mind. He hadn't been afraid for Misato, not the way Kaworu was clearly afraid for Shinji. It hadn't occurred to him to be afraid for her.

Pretending kindness, pretending innocence, and then just a handful of hours later? Half the world ended. When Misato would have been right there at Ground Zero if her father hadn't taken her, and what had he known about what was about to happen? What gave him that much warning?

She'd thought that the angel had done it. Warned her father, decided to spare her and her alone when billions died. She hadn't hated SEELE for keeping her locked up and under observation for years because what if she was contaminated? What if it had some reason other than whimsy or sadism for killing everyone except her?

Or what if it really was because she was a child back then, when this angel had attached itself to Shinji and mourned Asuka when _so many more people were dead_?

'Peter Pan' they were calling him, according to her reports, because the Curse of the Eva kept pilots young… Except that was bullshit. Asuka wasn't aging because she was an angel. So were Rei and Kaworu. LCL exposure had nothing to do with it. Asuka had frozen at the age she was when that angel took over her Eva. Rei's bodies kept getting replaced, so they didn't last long enough for her to grow any older even if she might have otherwise. So why was this last one eternally fifteen, frozen just short of physical maturity, still as lanky as a colt? That joke about how supermodels were prepubescent boys with apples in their pockets: 'Kaworu' was pretty. Not handsome or beautiful, because those required maturity, but pretty.

He looked up at her now, and in the depths of those red eyes she saw that he'd known she was watching him. He'd managed to gather the tatters of his calm and try to wrap it around him, waiting now for her to speak.

He knew her.

SEELE's boy shouldn't know her, just of her. Of NERV's operations commander, of WILLE's founder. Shinji's cat had stayed in her apartment, even her bed, but this feeling now, of someone looking at her, of someone seeing _her_, not just her face, her clothing?

"_You_," she said, and drew her gun.

Staring at Misato's drawn gun, at first Kaworu seemed mostly calm, guilt and hesitation without a trace of fear. Just wondering if she was going to do it. If he should let her do it.

Then his eyes widened suddenly, and Kaji got the impression that if the kid's face could get any paler, if it wasn't already a newly-bleached sheet in this room's artificial lighting? If he'd been born with a normal complexion, he might still have been as pale as he was right now, as he clapped a hand over his throat, shoulders heaving, turning away from Misato to grasp the hard metal edges of the sink, bending over it and throwing up.

Not that there was much of anything to throw up: Kaji had never seen the kid eat in the first year he knew him, just take those pills of his, and eventually he'd realized that if the kid was an angel, he might not need to eat and there were plenty of people who _did_. Something he'd had confirmed at the birthday party, how Kaworu's slice of birthday cake had remained untouched until the cook started to get worried and came over to ask him if he couldn't handle gluten or something. The _ow _on Kaworu's face around the second bite was different from his usual headache, and when Kaji heard him tell the cook that it was fine, he'd just bitten the inside of his lip he had to wonder if it had been so long that the angel had forgotten how to chew without doing that? Was _chewing _something you could seriously forget how to do?

Normal people's teeth started to rot away if they didn't chew with them, just like every other part of the body needed exercise.

The arm Kaworu was bracing himself with started to give way, and Kaji caught him, bony, long, thin limbs collapsing into his decently-muscled (if he did say so himself) arms. He felt Kaworu's stomach continue to heave, even though there wasn't even water or acid left to come up.

"Get away from him," Misato said coldly.

Kaji half-turned to catch her eyes and nodded his head to the side for her to circle around and get a clear line of fire. Kaji himself wasn't moving, and Misato had been a soldier and now was the head of WILLE: didn't she know how good cop, bad cop worked by now?

She frowned, and there might have been a flicker of concern there in her eyes, ruthlessly suppressed. Some part of her wanting to order Kaji away from the angel not so that she didn't have to shoot through him to hit the angel, but so that the angel couldn't hurt Kaji. She still wanted to protect him, even though she'd thrown up her hands and said that if he was so damn determined to get himself killed (just like her father) that was _his _problem years ago.

It wasn't that he minded the idea of a happily-ever-after with Misato, but there wasn't even going to be a _tomorrow _unless the world managed to catch a break, and they weren't going to get any luck unless they made their own: they both knew that, especially with SEELE and NERV trying to ruin things for the rest of them.

"You alright?" Kaji asked the angel now that Misato was in position, trying to sound concerned and calming.

"I," a swallow, and from the side Misato could see his throat move, and realize the bump on it was called the _Adam's apple_. "I was considering… letting her do it. It seemed like… a sentence, but… No one should ever _want _to die. That is a _sickness_, and for an angel to experience such a sickness… What have I become?" he whispered, barely any breath behind that voice, as though he didn't want to hear, didn't want to know what came from his lips now? "Have I… like the others? This world's madness: it has infected me, hasn't it?" he asked, despairing, a note of desperation in there for someone to tell him it wasn't true but fearing that there would be no reassurance, because it was the truth. "For me to _want to die_, when that is what SEELE wishes for this world, for me to have yielded to them in my heart when I am the _only one left here _who remembers what the truth is, what should be… Have I too… And wishing to heal this world _and die_, Shinji told me how wrong it was, and it was cruel, was _sick _of me to wish to leave him the way his parents have, and I… How could I crave death? What have they done to me, what has this world done to me?" He grabbed for the rim of the sink again, and Kaji reached for the handle to turn the water on, only to hear Ritsuko clear her throat urgently.

Those were _samples _he was about to wash down the drain, and for a moment Kaji actually did feel pissed off at her, that she could think of that at a time like this, except that was her _job_. It was his job too, his duty. He had to let himself care about the kid to be convincing (to fool an empath) but to let himself forget, even for a second, what the goal was here?

The angel didn't seem to have noticed, thankfully. When he could speak again, "Shinji kept telling me, that I wanted to die and leave him and it was wrong, and I don't know. I just don't know if I didn't realize that anything was wrong because I didn't take it that seriously, really believed that I just wanted the best and wasn't making an excuse at all or I didn't see anything wrong with _dying_ and… How long have I… How could I ever have children now? How could I infect a new world with such madness?"

And Kaji remembered a woman at a bar, talking way too loudly because she needed to be heard. How she wanted kids, she wanted kids _so damn much_, but bringing them into a world like this? Where they'd starve to death eventually, and that was _if _the angels didn't get anyone first? How selfish would someone have to be, to do that to a poor kid?

The idea that it was wrong, no, _evil, _to bring new life into this world? That doom was _that _certain? That there was something _perverted_ now about working for the future, for there to be a next generation to struggle for survival on this dead and rotting wreck of a world?

"Those _bastards_," he said, bending over Tabris and feeling more than a little sick himself, wanting to throw up himself, even if his trembling was with suppressed anger instead of the angel's nausea at the thought of being contaminated by something like that, of realizing that SEELE had infected him with their fucked-up… Evil. Damned if he could think of another word for it.

He had decided to kill a lot of people. He hadn't _wanted _to kill someone this much since he was a kid. "It's not just you," he told him, half for Misato's benefit. "They're doing that to the entire world. On purpose!"

He felt the angel's nod. "Yes. They worship death, even if they cloak it in godhood and oneness. If all are one, that one would be a new person. Different from any of the components that made it up. Subsumed in the whole, those components would no longer be themselves. Not just death, but death of the soul, since those souls would be unable to escape and be reborn, have new lives and more chances to be happy. They find life a burden too terrible to bear, so they hate it. They wish to flee from it. They hate the First Ancestral Race for spreading life to other worlds, leaving those other worlds to suffer. They hate anyone who can find joy in life, because why can that person live well when they couldn't, for all their money and power? They label success impossible in order to excuse their own failure. They also want the souls of this world to crave oblivion so they won't have the will to fight, to break free. To become _themselves _again, instead of simply a security blanket for those who…"

The angel's fists were clenched. Thin, delicate fingers, as though he'd been made to play the piano instead of as SEELE's smart bomb, intended to fool NERV into thinking he was human so he'd be allowed right past their defenses – except Gendo Ikari already knew what Rei was – except the Evas were made from what was kept at the heart of Terminal Dogma (except the ones that were made from the angels' boss itself) so what was the point of the angels fighting their way there to begin with: so much to peel away, and maybe he'd begun to despair he'd ever get anywhere near the truth.

Maybe that was why he wanted to believe that this was true, that this kid was, if not telling the truth, at least on their side. At least trying to _be _true to humanity.

Survivor's guilt: this kid had it in spades, probably. A death wish was normal, human… or was that just what SEELE wanted them to think?

All the signs, a couple years of observations of how this kid just didn't match any culture on Earth. SEELE's moonbase wasn't on earth, sure, but if this was how he reacted to realizing he'd bought into their ideology, even just enough to hesitate for a few seconds to blow his nonexistent cover by blocking a gunshot?

Someone who saw Ayanami number whatever (how many had Gendo killed, when he realized the new one wasn't going to do what he wanted?) looking at one of the gardeners who had taken his shirt off and tried to find a word, finally coming up with 'bicurious?' Even after reassuring Kaji that yes, Ayanami was female. Physically. No, Kaworu wasn't saying she had a male soul, certainly female, and Kaji hadn't been able to get anything out of him after that.

Bicurious, when bi meant two? Being curious about maybe being interested in a second type? So what was the first, the main type supposed to be, then?

Then there was how Kaworu was all smiles for men and women alike, always happy to touch or be touched once he'd figured out what they wouldn't mind. How he seemed to regard people finding him physically attractive more of an inconvenience than anything else, and other people thinking that he might be physically attracted to anyone, ever, as one of those silly ideas that people got sometimes as opposed to a natural consequence of being a teenage male. As though people should just _know _that wasn't going to happen.

Kaji had honestly wondered more than once if SEELE had taken some scissors to their tame angel (bulls were gelded to make them docile) before he'd managed to get Tabris to admit that he was an angel, and explain how that meant his 'type' was planets.

"You're the one from that day," Misato said. What one from what day? The one who had spoken to her on the day of Second Impact, and it had taken years for Kaji to get her to tell him even that much and yet she kept going on and on about _him _not sharing information? "Why." It wasn't even a question: her voice was too hard, too controlled, for a questioning lilt. Just the certainty that he would tell her. Now.

Kaworu pushed Kaji away a little, so he could turn to face Misato, still bracing himself on the sink. "I lowered my shield strength so I could hear your transmissions and know when the time had come. SEELE detonated bombs, and I only had minimal protection against beta and gamma radiation. I was damaged, and the others broke free."

"From you?" Kaji asked, and Kaworu nodded.

"There was an argument over who should have this world, Lilith or Adam, that dragged on too long. Billions of years, when it would be much faster to just let one of them have it, and wait for their children to achieve spaceflight. Lilith was the one who actually landed on this world, so even though their claims were still equal – that was the problem – it would have been significantly more trouble to dislodge her. I managed to seal Adam, and that made the others come to me," to be caught in turn, "and leave Lilith to her work. But they did not go to sleep. They… So this world's madness is my fault, the madness that made SEELE cause 'Second Impact.' I don't claim innocence, Misato Katsuragi. You have every right to blame me for what has happened. That is why… I was tempted." To let her shoot him. "You stood on the edge of space, so close to discovering Lilith and your heritage if you found _me_," when he was much smaller than Lilith's Geofront, even if the power signature of that many S2 engines was bigger. "You should have had a glorious future, and I didn't know, didn't see that… This madness…" He shook his head, bowing it to her in defeat. "I thought you would be well, and I had failed you, I let your future be poisoned before the first of your ancestors was born."

He wasn't looking at her now, wasn't seeing either of them, eyes unfocused and full of horror at his failure, at what he knew now. "Even though SEELE is wrong, even those of you who still strive to live have no concept of how crippled this world is, how different all of your lives would have been if the other angels weren't screaming their rage and madness into your minds. If I had taken them away from this world, if I had checked to make sure they were asleep before going into stasis myself…" A wince, familiar to Kaji if not Misato. He closed his eyes, frowning slightly as he raised a hand to touch his temples.

Then that hand was torn away, and wild eyes glared at them. Wild _blue _eyes, somehow even more startling than red in that pale face. "Don't listen to him: it's not his fault!"


	5. Chapter 5

…_Why the heck am I doing the 'explaining things to Misato and Kaji' plot _here_ when I still haven't done it in the main fic? Yeesh. I am quite the irresponsible writer, aren't I?_

_In The Cat Who 'verse, it was Shinji that protected Rei from Ramiel while she took the shot, since he knows more about how to use an Eva's AT field and Rei's the trained sniper._

* * *

The anger and wildness in Shinji's eyes: maybe someone else would have seen madness in them. Thought that Shinji was a madman all along, that he really was responsible for Third Impact (doubly tempting, when to push all the responsibility onto Shinji's shoulders would mean she wasn't responsible).

Except she recognized that wild desperation.

It was hers.

The desperation of someone cornered, someone running out of options or rather with no options, only the hope that they might find some. Someone surrounded by enemies, who barred the way to the only possible ways to survive.

Someone with a crew to protect, a _planet _riding on their victory, and everyone who wasn't with them was against them. Everyone who wasn't helping them was helping SEELE _kill everyone _they were trying to protect.

She remembered a day long ago, when Shinji had taken Suzuhara's brother and another classmate into his Eva's control plug. How he'd fought then, when he had people to protect.

A mild-mannered young man, who liked cooking and a clean house, walks by the beach, classical music and playing with his cat. Someone who avoided confrontation, who hid behind smiles almost as much as the angel did (the angel who raised him?).

Someone with a lot of anger in him, waiting for an excuse. Someone with a knife in his hands and two innocent people in his cockpit on the day he'd killed his second angel.

Shinji was a nice boy: that was what she'd reminded herself when the temptation to hate him struck, as the months went by on this ruined world.

There was a saying about this, wasn't there? Beware the nice ones. Because humans hurt each other. By accident, all the time. That was what life was like, the hedgehog's dilemma. So for someone to be nice, for someone to inflict less pain on those around them than the average person? That took work. That meant they were trying not to hurt other people. That required knowledge of _how _to hurt other people, in addition to determination not to do those things.

Shinji was in Kaworu's body now, and he cared about the angel. Just like he'd cared about those two boys. He knew that Misato wanted to kill the angel, just like the angel he'd fought that day had wanted to destroy the Eva and those inside it.

She remembered another operation, when Shinji promised to protect the still-recovering Rei from the angel's laser, because she was already hurt, so he couldn't let her bear the brunt of its attacks when if either one of them was taken out the operation would fail.

Now Gendo was killing Rei over and over, and Misato wasn't doing a damn thing to stop it. She'd like to, but she wasn't in a position to do anything about it, so as far as Shinji knew, he was the only one who cared about saving Rei. Much less Kaworu, when he'd pushed Kaji's arm off his shoulder like that, glare as good as saying 'I'm on to you.'

Back in the day, she might have appreciated a Shinji who was in this 'the people I protect are in danger and you are _in my way' _mode 24/7. Although, in hindsight, it would have been hard to keep him pointed at the angels instead of at Gendo Ikari and SEELE, who while they were evil bastards were also the people running NERV, the people who made it possible to fight the angels.

He would have ended up pointed at her back then, just like now, because back then Misato seriously believed that SEELE had humanity's best interests at heart and Gendo was just the kind of man they needed to make the tough decisions as opposed to a bastard who really just did not give a fuck about anything other than himself and what he wanted.

Shinji – it was clearly Shinji – was leaning back against the wall now, looking back and forth between her and Kaji with a glare that almost dared them to try to kill Kaworu. That almost wished they would, because at least attacking someone was _honest_. Pretending that they could still be allies, trying to use him until it was time to stick a knife in his back?

"_He thinks we're like Gendo_," Misato realized. Shinji was used to being abandoned by adults, and for an entire world to use him as a scapegoat? For the adults to get away with doing this to him, with everything they said about him?

It was almost a relief when that same cat appeared on his shoulder, bracing his front paws on the top of Shinji's head for balance until Shinji reached up to steady him, trying to avoid taking his eyes off Misato and Kaji.

The cat licked at Shinji's hand, and for a moment Misato thought _washing the blood off it_ like Shinji was MacBeth, but was there really blood on the hands of Unit 01's pilot? If he'd gone in there knowing that Third Impact was about to start, and he was heading towards Ground Zero but that might be the only way to limit the casualties?

Shinji made an annoyed noise, and now she found herself remembering her mother, how the woman would fuss over her when she dropped Misato off at school and not in front of the other kids! Not in front of Misato and Kaji, when Shinji was trying to be threatening. Trying to intimidate them into taking him seriously, into not attacking his cat.

Like this, it was hard not to think of a hissing kitten, and if Tabris was big enough relative to Shinji perhaps he would have hooked him with a paw and groomed him until he calmed down, instead of rubbing his face against Shinji's hair, purring to show that he was alright and trying to soothe him that way.

Everyone could see that it was working, even though Shinji clearly didn't _want _it to work. It was still a little hard to harness that protective panic, that fear for his best friend (or was that dogs) when Kaworu kept reminding him that he was right here, and he was _fine_.

"Kaworu wanted to be the one to talk to you so I wouldn't have to deal with being hated," Shinji said finally. "But I can feel it anyway, what _he's _made the world think about me. Kaworu's old men, too: they hate me for keeping Third Impact from being total. I'm not a kid anymore, I'm not as fragile as he thinks I am."

The sentiments there, the anger at not being treated like an adult by the people who wanted to protect him: Shinji seemed so much like Asuka right then it was hard for Misato to take him seriously. Real adults didn't care whether or not they were treated like adults. They were too busy _being _adults.

It didn't help that Kaworu's body was badly in need of a haircut, and the cat's ministrations had knocked his bangs down in front of eyes that were now Shinji's so blue glared out at them through a fall of silver. Some people might consider a look like that 'cool,' but anything that impeded vision was a bad idea when someone was thinking about picking a fight.

"And I know you're just trying to get him to like you so he might hesitate and give you a chance to kill him first," Shinji said, glaring at Kaji. "That you even think he'd do something like that… You think he's like _you_, and Gendo? It should be never trust anyone over twenty."

Although Misato herself was closer to thirty than she liked to think about.

"Both of you are thinking that you don't have to take me seriously," Shinji said, and _now _he had their attention. "Kaworu taught me how to read minds. I'm a lot better at it than he is, and he has morals." Which Shinji didn't, not when his family was at stake. "I _will _know if you try to hurt him, and I _will _stop you. Pretending to be someone's friend just so you can use that against them: that's _disgusting_. I only let him hang out with you because it might be a way to help you, Misato, and then you just… I'm used to adults trying to use me and manipulate me, only caring about themselves at _best_, but I thought you were different, Misato. I guess I was wrong."

"I was an _idiot_," she told him. "I didn't think that anyone would 'use and manipulate' what we needed in order to save the world. Pervert it into something that would kill us all. So you're right: I used to be better than them. I used to not think in those terms. And _billions of people died _because I was too trusting, because I thought being an honorable military officer was all that was needed. Grow up, Shinji. Blaming me for taking precautions, for distrusting people? The last person I trusted was your father!"

"He's not my father!" Shinji yelled at her.

The cat on his shoulder shook itself, then jumped down to the floor. "Shinji," Tabris said, looking sternly at his near-mirror image after taking human form.

Shinji glared at him and Tabris sighed, nodded, conceded the point. He looked at the pilot with gentler red eyes now. "I know you're upset, but they aren't our enemies. Only the enemies of those who wish to harm this world. I _am _an angel. We discussed this." What? That people would be suspicious of Kaworu if they knew what he was? "You're suspicious because you've been betrayed: so have they. Don't… Shinji, you were happy, living with Misato. She hasn't changed. She's just worried, and you should know that." He put his hand on Shinji's shoulder, and Shinji gave the two spectators another glare before he let Tabris hug him. Hold him.

_Gendo _wasn't his father, Shinji had insisted.

"We knew you had ulterior motives from the beginning," Kaworu told Kaji, Shinji's now-white head tucked under his chin, Kaworu stroking it like Shinji was the cat. "I don't mind. You were trying to help Misato, and the Lilim, when Misato is Shinji's friend and the Lilim need people like you." When Shinji was a Lilim.

"We need all the help we can get, is that what you're saying?" Misato asked him, wishing she could argue with him there.

"I'm sad that Asuka is gone, but you've accepted Bardiel's help. Why?" he asked her, hoping he was right.

"Because at first we thought she was Asuka. She thought it too. Once she got her AT field under control, Ritsuko could check it against that angel. Apparently they're like fingerprints."

"The light of the soul," Kaworu said, nodding. "And no two souls are alike in all the worlds and time. There's a saying…" he paused, "One I don't think would translate very well. But you didn't even tell Asuka, and it's not because you thought she would betray you once she knew?" Or else they would have tried to prevent Kaworu from telling her.

"Angels have human DNA," Misato said. "You're like us. That means you're just as capable of being bastards as we are." But it also meant that Asuka's remnant was still a _person_. Asuka's gift to them. Even though she was dead, she'd left them an angel as dedicated to the world as she was. How the hell could Misato turn that down? Waste Asuka's final effort?

"We are human," Kaworu admitted. "And capable of wrongdoing, as much as I hate to watch them fall so far in their madness. But we're also more powerful than you. So precautions were taken." He looked down at Shinji. "We were made to give life to worlds. This world is dying because of me. No, not only because of me," he said. "Shinji is right, that it would be an insult to you to deny SEELE's role in this, SEELE's choices. It might be because of the sealed angels that you were forced to lock yourselves away inside your own heads, that you experience such loneliness, but they were the ones who decided to blow me up even knowing how many would die with me. Life on your world may be difficult and painful, but they were the ones who decided to make it _meaningless_." A flash there, of something close to anger, and Misato had to wonder about these 'precautions.' If anything, it was easier to infuriate the new Asuka… Or was it that she now found things more infuriating? Had more of a sense of justice instead of wanting the world to be unfair on her behalf, because she was smart and had earned it? "It might be presumptuous of me to call this 'my mess,' but if you want to make the seas blue again, I want to help you. I'll do anything I can… that Shinji will let me," he amended himself.

_That _wince, the one that caused Kaworu to pause, came from Shinji hitting him in the side. Not hard, but enough to make him have to catch his breath before he made a promise to do _anything_. To do whatever it took, even if it killed him, when he'd already volunteered to die. When that was the plan he'd suggested to Misato.

"I can be in two places at once," he told them. "Either as a human or as a cat. That's how I visited Shinji without SEELE finding out I was gone. I need to stay at NERV to help them farm," help the plants grow, a disturbing percentage of the world's remaining food production, "but I can also remain here, if having someone else to study would help. I don't think Asuka would like me to train her, but I've already been helping to train Rei, so I could write something for Dr. Akagi." That she could pass along to Asuka, after studying it herself. "There's also the doctor who made this body for me: I rescued him from SEELE moonbase and I could give you the coordinates of where he's been since then. He might be able to help you think of something. There are a few more experts still on SEELE moonbase who genuinely want to help the Lilim, including the designer of my Eva, but it would take me some time to figure out how to bring them to you without SEELE realizing that I'm responsible for their disappearances."

If he could be in two places at once, then putting a DSS collar on the body here wouldn't do anything about the body still at NERV.

…but it couldn't hurt, could it? And having him pose as Ritsuko's cat would be the perfect excuse to collar him.

"Shinji?" Kaworu said, shaking the kid's shoulder a little.

"I'm sorry, Misato," Shinji said with a very definite air of 'I'm only saying this because Mom is making me: I'm actually not sorry at all, and I _will _do it again as soon as Mom's out of sight if you give me a reason.'

"What I'd like an apology for is you keeping secrets from me."

"We didn't know if we could trust you!" Shinji said, annoyed again despite Kaworu's efforts. "What if you'd told Gendo or SEELE? You thought they were the good guys, and you thought I was just a kid! You would have assumed that Kaworu was lying to me until you saw something that made you realize there was something wrong with them and we got some proof, and you know it."

Misato paused. "Fair enough," she admitted, because yes, she would have had to be insane to trust the judgment of a kid who trusted an angel. Especially _that _angel. The one who had thought that she'd be fine. And then half the world blew up.


	6. Chapter 6

_I did warn you that this was going to be a Bad Ending Route. You can't go on and on about a threat and never have it materialize._

* * *

It turned out that when Tabris said he could be in two places at once, he meant he could pay attention to what was going on in two places at once. He was more than capable of having more than two bodies, which didn't make Misato any happier about her odds of killing him, if it came to that.

He'd conjured up a spare body for Shinji to use, while he sat on Ritsuko's desk and helped her research angel abilities. Not being able to speak didn't seem to be slowing down the collaboration there, or was it that Ritsuko spoke cat?

Dr. Itoh still stayed at least a meter away from 'Tabby-cat' at all times: according to Ritsuko the first time he'd come into WILLE's lab to find Kaworu there in that form, the cat had meowed up at him and he'd jumped back about a meter and responded with one of the better 'you're kidding, right?' looks she'd ever seen, and being the one to brief people on the fucked-up nature of the Evas meant that Ritsuko had seen a _lot _of those looks in her time.

Nothing did calm unconcern like a cat, but it hadn't escaped Ritsuko's notice that Shinji came by to pick up Tabris when the research session was done instead of it turning into another all-nighter. Oh, _supposedly_ it was because he wanted help training Asuka in how to use her AT field for terraforming so WILLE could start growing their own produce _without _having the other angel encroach on part of their mobile base or any of their hidey-holes.

The glare he'd given Dr. Itoh would have been evidence that no, it wasn't a coincidence, but then Shinji _always _glared at Dr. Itoh, when he acknowledged the man's existence at all. Better evidence was that if Shinji needed someone to demonstrate the things he couldn't actually do himself, he could have just asked Rei.

Since Shinji was inhabiting that body most of the time Tabris had made it look more like Shinji, but too much of a resemblance would have been a bad thing, given that Shinji was hated the world over right now.

"That's Aya-Rei," Misato knew the day Shinji showed up in her office with a lithe Siamese in his arms.

He nodded. "Her soul keeps getting drawn towards the Geofront, so it's easy for _him_ to trap her in clones there. Having a second body might…" Shinji bit back the rest of that (he still didn't trust her, even now, not when it came to his family). "They like Tabby-cat here," he said instead. "So she'll be happier than just stuck in NERV with only us to talk to, besides _him_." Gendo.

A lot of people were very happy to see a cat, when rats getting into a single food stockpile would be an unmitigated disaster. People always exclaimed when they saw Tabby for the first time, that it had been a year or more since they last saw a cat. The looks of gratitude in their eyes when someone told them that yes, they were allowed to pet it, and no one in the know had the heart to tell the rest of WILLE that it wasn't a real cat.

Asuka conscripted Rei into service as her own shoulder pet, in the absence of a parrot. That worried Misato a little since the angels were supposed to be after Lilith as well as Adam, or at least Lilith was enough to draw them towards Tokyo-3, but when a week went by without a Fourth Impact she relaxed again.

The unused break room was where Shinji stashed his body when he wasn't using it, leaving it curled up on the couch, and it became his unofficial bedroom since no one wanted a repeat of the time someone panicked since they'd found a young man who wasn't breathing.

So it was a surprise when Misato went in there and heard three sets of soft breaths, the boy and the cat curled up in the hollow of his arms, another guarding his back.

The way Shinji clasped Rei like he had to reassure himself, even in sleep, that his family was safe? It was as sad as it was cute. A boy trapped in agelessness, like Shinji, shouldn't have his face pinched with worry in his sleep. Even so it was cute, and sweet, and it was hard to remember the last time she'd seen something with even a touch of innocence in this place. There was no safety or shelter here, not for anyone, but Shinji's determination to protect Rei made her wish there was. Made her feel like there should be, when family was trying so hard to protect…

Like when her father put her in the capsule. Because she was his daughter, and he wanted to protect her more than he wanted to survive himself.

Shinji had run _towards_ the angel to save Rei. Kaworu, who rested here as well, was willing to die to restore the world where Shinji lived, so he could survive. Except Shinji didn't want him to do that, no more than Misato wanted her own father to die, and Rei couldn't want her brother to die because of her, and Misato found herself gripping the back of the couch remembering the sickening movement of the ocean around her, the thirst clawing at her throat as she drifted, not knowing what had happened except that some part of her had felt her father die and all she could do was try to destroy that awareness, try to hope for rescue, hope that she wasn't alone that he wasn't dead why was he dead because of that monster but was it her fault he hadn't come in the capsule with her she was alone…

A furry head rubbed against her fingers, softness and warmth and concern, hoping to wake her out of those dark thoughts.

"What have I told you about reading my mind?" she growled down at the kitty – ahem, the angel.

Another rub, and then Tabris was perched on the armrest by Shinji's head. "I wouldn't dare intrude," he told her, and there was a wry twist to his lips that made her believe him, because it hinted that there was a reason besides respect of her. Damn. Mind. "Cats can tell when humans are upset."

"And how do I know _they _aren't mindreaders?"

He shrugged, still smiling, because there really wasn't much she could do but take his word for it. Or Shinji's, when Shinji was on his side and probably quite willing to lie on the angel's behalf.

There was so much of human interaction that required trust, and for a veteran of NERV?

Ever-watchful Shinji, who had never trusted any adult from the beginning, made a noise of complaint, and she didn't know if it was because of her presence or because the warm weight was gone from his back. The angel turned his attention back to Shinji, dropping down onto the floor and picking Shinji up, one hand under his shoulders and another under his knees, so he could sit down, leaning back against the corner of the couch's back and the armrest in the kind of position that only a teenager could possibly find comfortable, especially with one of his knees drawn up under him in an asymmetrical sprawl that honestly made her back hurt just looking at it but was probably comfortable… for Shinji, once Tabris had him arranged.

"All that didn't wake him up?" she asked. Rei, too: if she was Rei, and the 'ground' under her started moving like that?

"He's not quite asleep." Shinji's head tilted forward a little as Kaworu rubbed the back of his neck with his knuckles, digging them in on either side of Shinji's spine to go after the tension that had to be there (Misato barely remembered a time when her neck didn't ache, a consequence of going through life waiting for the next attack) almost absently, the way someone could pet a cat while carrying on a conversation. "Shinji wished to cook for his sister, but resources are limited," and even Shinji could only do so much with the UN standard rations. "The brain remembers details that the conscious mind does not, especially scent and taste."

"So he's feeding her in their dreams?" Misato asked. "I almost wish…" that she could get in on that. The rations were mind-numbing, monotonous, a reminder that food was limited and there was no savor left in life. To be tired of rations was to be tired of life: that was becoming a truism. Many who left the former behind on their plates soon opted out of the latter.

"He is a very good cook," Kaworu agreed with a smile.

"…Taking credit for it?" she asked him.

"No, I was raised on the moonbase. They might have experimented with my abilities and the hydroponics, but cooking? When I was created for a higher purpose?" His smile was mocking now, because it was as ridiculous as it was wrong that SEELE could consider death a higher purpose than bringing others joy and the sustenance they needed to live. "Shinji is almost entirely self-taught," he said proudly.

Misato couldn't believe she was seriously considering asking Shinji if he could do something, _anything_ with WILLE's food, but even if according to SEELE's doctrine Shinji had become a god or something during Third Impact, some miracles were beyond anyone.

Well, if angels could turn organic matter into other organic matter, then they might be able to transform the rations into something with a less vague resemblance to food, but Kaworu had just admitted he couldn't cook, Asuka certainly couldn't and apparently Rei was still learning what good food _was_, forget how to make it.

"Penny for your thoughts?" he asked her.

"Wondering if we should appoint you and Rei morale officers." Or mascots. "You're good at cheering people up." At worming their way into people's hearts, Tabby-cat with his affectionate nature and Rei with her elegant but skittish shyness. Always looking so surprised and touched when people stroked her head and told her how cute she was instead of hitting her: the consensus was that she was a stray who had somehow managed to survive being hunted for food long enough for Ritsuko to find her and use her to test out some artificial taurine source.

Ritsuko wasn't the only one who had lost a pet to the need to conserve food. Pen-Pen… Misato had brought him home, then Shinji, for the sake of relief from the loneliness that was life. Same reason she brought men back to her place. It was nice to have another living thing around, some living thing that cared for her, at least as long as she kept the food and/or sex coming. Something to fill the silence.

"Thank you," Kaworu said, sincerely complimented. "I've tried to help him find happiness, despite everything."

"Why him?" Misato asked, wondering what the feeling was she felt rising up inside her. "Why him and not me?" Oh, that was it. No wonder she'd had trouble distinguishing it, when it was the emotion that always tinged _everything _she felt. Anger. "Because he was going to be a pilot, while I was just _left there_?" He'd only helped Shinji because the pilot would be useful, and he dared pretend that he was kind?

"Shinji was part of the prophecies. In their eyes, he was important. I was even briefed on him, Asuka and Rei, since someday it would be my task to defeat them. You, what you saw, what they did to you: supposedly you were damaged by what you experienced and undergoing care. I didn't know the truth. I infiltrated their computer systems and records, but they weren't keeping records of what they did to you."

Of course they wouldn't. "Even the angels aren't all-knowing?"

He shook his head. "It's even worse than that. According to SEELE's dogma, possession of both an S2 engine and a brain, the 'Fruits of Life and Wisdom,' makes someone a god. All-powerful," Tabris said, and couldn't help but laugh. "They seem to think that this is an _enviable _state. Sometimes I think… I'm so useless and ineffectual, I can't help anyone at all. If this is what they consider godhood, perhaps showing them the truth would shatter their dreams, make them _stop this_. But when they're so deluded as to call the broken ones 'perfect beings,' or any angel complete in and of themselves when we were made for the benefit of others? They want an end to the pain of loneliness, they think it's possible to stop needing other people, and that's absolutely not true."

"Life is pain. Anyone who says different-"

"That's wrong! Pain is a part of life, but it's not supposed to be like this! This loneliness… All of you are so alone now, but once the other angels are… gone," dead, that meant, and she saw the angel wince at the thought, "you can have your heritage back, have the stars back. Reach out to each other's souls again, without having to be afraid! Don't just accept that life is nothing but pain and despair! It's true that without others, loneliness is inevitable and will always return, but that's just the same as how hunger is inevitable without food."

Said the boy who didn't eat, Misato thought, but then again the angels needed S2 engines to function. They were still getting energy from somewhere, even if S2 engines were perpetual motion machines.

"It's a part of life, but it's not a reason to despair. Reaching out to others to sate loneliness is supposed to lead you to happiness, just like food can make people happy." The angel looked down and she followed his gaze, to see his hand on the head of a boy who had done just that, who had cooked for them just because he wanted to, spent time every day making meals that made her drool just thinking about them, after years of nothing but rations.

The angel was right, she had to admit it: there was a time when eating wasn't just staving off hunger but something to look forward to, in and of itself.

When sex was something she did because it was _fun_, not just because she needed to stop thinking for awhile. When it wasn't just a matter of the two of them using each other to forget, but something she and Kaji, she and Ritsuko, she and some hot guy at a bar did together, just because they wanted to feel good and know they'd made someone else feel good.

Yes: it was true that for Misato there was always an element of hunger there, of need. The need to feel someone's skin, to taste someone's sweat and smell their lust. To prove to herself that this was real, she wasn't locked up in that room anymore, wasn't _alone_.

There, in the dark: she knew the hell of loneliness. She knew the desperate need to connect to someone, anyone. She'd thought that was the default, what life was like if no one else was around, but it _wasn't _normal for no one else to be around. There were millions of people (there'd been billions, once upon a time) and they sought each other out. What she'd experienced? It wasn't natural. It wasn't normal. People weren't doomed to be alone from the moments of their births: they couldn't be born in the first place if they were alone! They were born with families and then they sought out friends, lovers: it _wasn't _natural to be alone!

But she'd lost her family. The world had lost billions of people, families friends lovers, in Second Impact.

Then it happened again.

The pain of loss: no one wanted to go through that again, and again. So they closed their hearts, tried to tell themselves that it was natural to be alone, that they could survive on their own, that they didn't need anyone… But existence without anyone else there, Misato knew very well, was a living hell.

So people began to think that life was hell, was like being tied up in that dark room and even if she screamed they weren't going to come, weren't going to let her out.

So the world started wanting it to _stop_. Wanted to _stop hurting_.

"So that's what Kaji was talking about!" she realized. "They really are trying to make all of us suicidal!"

"Trying to make sure that your souls will submit to complementation, instead of breaking free," Kaworu agreed. "They claim to believe that complementation is destiny, is perfection, and no one would turn it down or ever wish to leave. Yet they are so afraid that the souls of the Lilim will flee their 'embrace,' seek their next lives, and leave them alone with their failure and despair. Just like they claim they wish to end human suffering even as they work to intensify it."

Misato's body shook, just once, her fingernails digging hard into the back of the couch, tearing through the old fabric. Not a shudder, a shudder was born of fear or dread but this was anger, a moment of white-hot, destructive rage. Not the long-burning coals she'd kept carefully banked and tended, to preserve them and their heat until she could finally _do something_. This was a bomb going off in her chest, the shockwave jolting her entire body, radiating outwards. The kind of anger that made people flip tables, break their own furniture because they had to hurt _something_ before they could calm down. The need to lash out at the world.

"Kaworu!"

She wasn't expecting the punch that hit her face, as Shinji surged up and the pale-haired angel disintegrated into LCL. "How could you… If he's dead, if I can't…"

It was an Ayanami… It was Rei that caught Shinji, as he let his body fall, discarding it like the puppet it was.

"What… just… happened?" Misato wanted to know, staring at the LCL that had spattered the walls. She could feel droplets of it sliding down her forehead, her cheeks: they were going to have to decontaminate this room, she thought, before Rei waved her hand and made all of it vanish.

"The AT field is the light of the soul. Angelic AT fields enclose their bodies, allowing them to shape matter as they will and endure hostile environments. Lilim AT Fields protect their minds, so they can connect to other minds freely without needing to worry about identity contamination, losing their individuality. You lashed out. My soul was entirely within Shinji's Absolute Territory, so I was protected by his barrier. Shinji likened it to an Eva hitting a wall with a punch backed by its AT field. What happens if there is a Lilim between their fist and the wall?" That was a rhetorical question. "The Lilim possess AT Fields, but they do not protect them from physical damage."

And the angels possessed AT Fields that didn't protect them from mental damage? "That's how Asuka did it," Misato realized.

Rei nodded, looking worried. Was she _biting her lip_? "Tabris was worried when he first came here that your anger would cause you to kill him even without knowing what you were doing. He was watching you for intent to kill, but for you to lash out like that? He had no warning."

"Because you didn't warn me," that she could do something like that. Misato couldn't blame them for not revealing a vulnerability to her, a way for Lilim to kill angels (so easy! They'd never needed SEELE's damn Evas, those traps, those doomsday machines!), but she refused to feel responsible for something she hadn't meant to do or known she could do. Not when Kaworu should have damn well known it was dangerous to talk to her, to provoke her. Had he underestimated her?

Or had he just wanted to die?

"Shinji?" Rei asked, head turning as quickly as a striking snake, Misato utterly forgotten.

"I don't know," he said, opening worried eyes. "I don't know which one… I've always felt them together, I don't know which soul was his. What if… like Asuka…" He blinked up at Rei. "Rei, how can you…"

"It would let us know," she said, looking aside. "It is what he would want."

"If he still can't use the Spear of Cassius, that would mean it's _him_," Shinji agreed, sitting up. "But… I'm afraid to find out."

"He would have wanted to stay for you-"

"Are you saying that Asuka wanted to die?!" Shinji demanded of Rei, then forced himself to take a deep breath. "Sorry. Tabris was powerful, almost as powerful as Adam and Lilith, so maybe?" It wasn't like the difference in power level between Asuka and Bardiel. "Even though his soul was the one that was awake, the one on the outside, so wouldn't he have been hit first?" Another deep breath. "The Spear is the fastest way to find out."

"Gendo Ikari had it removed from my body," Rei said. "I will see if I can find one of the workers who moved it."

"I can't let him out until I know it's him," Shinji said as he pushed himself up, hands on the arm of the couch, refusing to look in Misato's direction. "He thinks he's Tabris, but Bardiel thinks he's Asuka. I was trying to save _Tabris' _personality, I just don't know which soul I loaded it into." A laugh tore itself from his chest. "If it is Adam, then Tabris got his wish, didn't he? Adam can use the Spear to fix this world: that's what you're thinking, isn't it Rei? Because even if he helped you, even if he saved you, he's not one of your children… Sorry," he said, seeing the look on Rei's face. "Sorry." His shoulders sagged, defeated. "Help me, Rei," he begged.

His sister stepped forward, wrapping her arms around him, and Shinji clung tight. The only lifeline he had left, the only person he had left to protect. He still wasn't looking at Misato.

Was it that he was afraid he'd kill her if he was reminded that she existed, that she was alive and Kaworu might be dead?

Or was she already dead to him?

Misato knew that she really should care. That there was something wrong with her that she didn't. Not when it sounded like either way, an angel was dead, and compared to the world's survival it was really hard to care about Shinji and his feelings.

No, that wasn't it.

After everything that had happened, it was just hard to care about anything. She should have been excited that they might have a way to fix this world, she should have been pushing Asuka to train harder. She could try to mourn, she could try to hope, but all she found when she reached down into her chest were anger and emptiness.

Had she ever been fighting to save this world? Or just to avenge it? To avenge herself? Was that why she couldn't empathize with Shinji's desperation to save someone? To save his family, when hers was gone?

"_They got me," _she realized. "_I thought I was fighting them still: is that why they let me? Because they knew I was already in their clutches, that I couldn't give anyone hope when there wasn't any left in me to give?" _Had she just been going through the motions?

Had she given up on trying to kill Kaworu, on trying to kill an _angel, that _angel, because she was seriously giving him a chance or because she didn't have it in her to care anymore? She hadn't even tried to come up with a plan to kill Shinji, and according to Ritsuko he was just as capable of triggering a Fourth Impact as any angel. He was a danger to the world: it shouldn't matter that he'd been a sweet kid once.

Bile rose in her throat, and she knew this was how Kaworu had felt when he realized how deeply they had their claws into him.

The child who had reached out just because she was curious, the angel who had waited for a future that was sure to come: she wasn't that child anymore. He wasn't that innocent anymore.

Both of them, trying to fight SEELE. Both of them already dead, just going through the motions? Had the world already lost? Did it matter if the seas were restored, when SEELE could just trigger a Fourth Impact to punish the world for daring to hope?

Shinji and Rei were gone: she didn't know if they'd left through the door or just vanished.

She didn't know _anything_, not anymore. How could she, when no one was telling anyone else the truth, not until it was too late?


	7. Chapter 7

_Something interesting is how Shinji just ups and leaves. I really get the sense that he'd wander away from his teacher and just come back a few days later, which of course contributed to the knowledge that there wasn't anyone who really cared what happened to him. Either they didn't really miss him, or it was just one more annoying thing he did (another cry for help unanswered) and they knew he'd be back eventually. _

_He's amazingly casual about it, even though Rebuild!Shinji seems to actually be worse than anime!Shinji at finding places to sleep out of the rain and such in a city - interesting that the 'later' Shinji is the less competent one when it comes to surviving as a homeless person. Even so the prospects of sleeping out there, of trying to find food, of wandering around in the rain don't daunt him: my concept of Rebuild!Shinji found being followed more annoying than the rain. And of course the people who were following him never bothered to try to talk to him, or spot him a meal or help him find a better place to sleep… This Shinji is used to being surrounded by people who do not care about his welfare. _

_There's definitely a stray cat element to Rebuild!Shinji, especially in 1.11: he wants shelter and companionship and all those things, but he knows better on some level. _

_In this 'verse, he did have someone who cared what happened to him, but that just meant he had company when he went out exploring and came back a few days later. There are a lot of references in The Cat Who to how Tabris is concerned about Shinji's ability to survive, there are caches and Shinji knows how to identify edible plants and fish and so on._

_This Shinji's street smarts would be less developed than Rebuild!Shinji's, since although he had someone teaching him Survival 101 it was someone who couldn't really teach him how to deal with Lilim, but his survival skills are much more developed (finding/building better shelter, etc.) than Rebuild's. _

* * *

It wasn't hard to pass for Kaworu. Shinji knew these people, was a silent observer to most of the conversations they had with SEELE's Boy. Even if the survivor was his Kaworu, his Tabby-cat, Misato scattered his memories. Shinji thought he could do a better job passing for Kaworu right now than Ka-the survivor could, if questioned, because at least his memories are intact. He wasn't watching Kaworu _all _the time, not when there was Rei to train and worry about and try to protect, try to salvage her memories every time Gendo killed her, but pretty close. So he should know everything they'd expect Kaworu to know.

He, he did his best to save the person who wanted to save him, wanted him to be happy, and yet… The world was still in danger, so he hadn't really saved it yet, even if he had stopped angels. Had he really saved anyone, anyone at all?

Did it really count as saving Rei when Gendo killed her afterwards, when he kept killing her?

He couldn't lend his strength to plants the way Kaworu did, but he remembered Kaworu's routine. Knew how to play the piano, too, although there was no joy to be found in sitting here, on the bench. Just memories. Kaworu talking about music, Kaworu singing a lullaby for Shinji inside his head (so his aunt and uncle wouldn't hear) when he was a little kid. He knew he was never going to be able to hear classical music again without thinking about Kaworu.

The greatest achievements of Lilim culture. The fruit of thousands of years trying to figure out how to reach out to each other, despite everything in the way.

The one person who reached out to Shinji, when he was an abandoned child. The one person on this planet who acted like adults were _supposed _to act. Who cared about something, anything other than himself.

Misato might say she was trying to save the world, but screams for vengeance echoed past her shields. Asuka's desire to be the best, Gendo's raving loneliness, willing to destroy everyone else as long as he got what he wanted…

Shinji had to close his eyes then, take a deep breath, focus. Because people were _always _looking at Kaworu. Kaworu attracted attention in cat form or human form. And a lot of these people were SEELE's.

If they saw hatred in their angel's eyes? If a kind, serene being clenched his fists? They'd know that something was very, very wrong. Kaworu was capable of anger, even if he wasn't very good at it, but none of these people had seen him like that. How furious he was with Gendo, with a man willing to smash a world, including its children, destroy the future of the Lilim and hurt Shinji just to get what he wanted?

So he had to keep smiling, at least until Rei found the spear. Until they knew, one way or another.

The hesitant concern, like someone touching the back of his hand, wanting to ask if he was alright without intruding? Just a reminder that the angel was there, but what if it wasn't the right angel?

Shinji could keep him caged away from the rest of his mind, but even though he wanted to wall out all sensation he still wanted to feel Tabris. Wanted to know that he was alright.

Misato might have just killed Kaworu, and she didn't really care. He could feel that it was mostly that she was burnt out, that too many people had died, and it was the numbness as much as the anger that sustained her, but he wanted to kill her. To hurt her. He wanted it _so much_. Just as much as he hated his father, hated SEELE.

He could go for a walk, see the green: nature had always made him feel better, but who was it who showed him nature? Who taught him the names of the plants, and what they fed, what they sheltered?

The same person who taught him music, who lifted him up and adjusted his hands as he tried to play an instrument that was really too big for him.

"_I found it_," Rei said, touching his mind carefully, with more of a trace of fear amidst the apology.

He didn't want to hurt her… but part of him did, because how could she think of Earth at a time like this?

He closed red eyes and put his arms on the piano, pillowing a silver head on borrowed hands.

The eyes he opened were Rei's.

A cavernous warehouse, in a bunker deep underground. They would never have been able to find this if Rei hadn't found the workers in the computer system and Shinji hadn't gone looking for the information in their minds until they had enough for it to be worth Rei's time to go looking for it.

Kaworu was going to be _very upset _with Shinji for trespassing in someone's mind, but 'candy from a baby' was the term and Kaworu would have to be alive to reprimand him, he thought as he placed someone else in control of this body.

The spear didn't light up when the First Angel put his hand on it.

Rei and, and Adam could still feel it respond.

The lances were half of what made a carrier admin a carrier admin, and all of what made it legal for a carrier admin to be as powerful as they were. Something to keep that power under control. In order to control the light of the soul, they had to act on an angel's soul, the inside of their mind. And since they were so fragile on that level? They had to be tailor-made for each angel. Tethys, ice-bound Tethys of the 'measure three times and then make it bigger so we don't have to do it twice' philosophy had made their first angel an ordinary angel instead of a carrier admin because they didn't have the infrastructure and decades of testing necessary to reliably make lances yet. It was easy to make replica lances that would kill, that could fit through an angel's AT field just far enough to reach the vulnerable areas. It was hard to make ones that would act properly on the targeted areas of their unconscious minds.

That would let them disengage safety features. That would let them terraform a planet without reformatting it first or debugging it afterwards.

Tabris had used the Spear of Cassius on Rei and Shinji because having Adam's soul in his body meant it responded to him even if it wouldn't really work for or on him, and Shinji's presence in the partial merge meant he could shield Rei from anything that might have damaged her soul.

Rei was thinking that now they could fix the world, the world where Lilith's children lived (and also cats) and Shinji had rarely felt so alone.

How could she think of that now? Did she see Shinji as her family at all, when he'd lost his family and there was something else that was more important to her? It was just the fate of the world!

Arms around him now, Rei must have made herself another body… Two sets of arms around him now.

A familiar voice murmured something, and no, it was not going to be okay, how could it ever be okay again?

"_You betrayed me," _Shinji found himself thinking. "_Just like my mother."_ By dying and leaving him alone… Except it was cruel of him to even think that. It wasn't like Tabris had _wanted _to leave him alone. How could he think something so cruel?

To make the person who was not Tabris suffer the way Tabris would have suffered? To make him stop holding Shinji, to make him stop reminding Shinji of someone who was _dead_, the only person who… Rei was still his family, Rei still cared what happened to him and he knew that, but maybe it was that he was only one among Lilith's billions of children?

He knew that it was selfish of him to want Rei to care that he was unhappy more than about the world. He didn't really care. So what if he was selfish sometimes?! It was called being human! It wasn't like he wanted to kill everyone to get Tabris back!

Tabris would have stared at Shinji, horrified, as though he was the second coming of Lorenz Keel, and blamed himself. Wondering how he could have gone so wrong, blaming himself for what Shinji would have chosen to do, dammit. Always thinking about other people, never about himself, and how much of that was the guilt and how much was just Tabris?

Was this what Tabris had wanted? They could fix the world now. Shinji could survive, and have children, and forests for those children to play in, and music for them to listen to and it was kind of impossible to give a damn about that.

"_I thought you'd never leave me_," he said to the person whose soul was a little like his mentor's, his brother's, his father's. "_Not like my father or my mother, you were better than them_." Such a good person, good enough that Shinji could trust them even though betrayal like that should have taught him never to trust anyone. That the people he thought loved him would just leave him, just abandon him, because they'd never cared about him in the first place. Because no one would ever really love him.

And he knew that was what SEELE and Gendo wanted him to think, but he'd known that they were wrong because, because of the person who helped him figure out how to play basketball. And now Tabris was gone too, and there were tears slipping down the cheeks he'd borrowed from Rei. He honestly hadn't noticed until now that he was in a girl's body, since Rei had called him without taking the time to change it first.

There wasn't enough novelty to it for it to distract him for more than a moment. Not any more than the breasts pressed to one of his sides did (he'd never had a chance to hug Rei in human form), not when the chin his head was tucked under was so familiar. The hand that combed through his hair.

A physical connection, since the Lilim needed that to feel loved. "_I'm here_," said that hand. "_You're safe, with someone to guard your back_," but Kaworu _wasn't _there, not anymore. Just an echo, a copy of his Kaworu, pressed onto the soul of someone who had spent billions of years throwing a fit over Lilith starting to terraform earth first. Even if it were ethical, he couldn't try to make Adam into his Kaworu. Like trying to replace a child's pet before they noticed that their goldfish had gone belly-up. Adam cared about him, but that was just an echo of Tabris' feelings for the only child the angel would ever have. Just a reminder of how much Shinji had lost.

So that was why Gendo destroyed every other memento of Yui.

He knew that Kaworu was dead. He knew from the way the great crystal set into this spear (much more elaborate than Lilith's, and once he would have been curious about what it meant about Adam's homeworld, that they'd design it that way) was glowing, startup complete.

He wasn't, he wasn't a child anymore.

He wasn't like Gendo, who tried to make Rei into nothing more than a living photograph to remind him of Yui.

Shinji wanted to keep crying. He wanted to scream. But crying was showing vulnerability, and he couldn't trust anyone. He'd never trusted anyone. The only person he'd ever trusted was dead, and he'd been _right there_ and he hadn't been able to do anything! If only he'd kept Kaworu safe in his mind, if only he'd ignored him when he wanted to focus on Misato and left Shinji's shields! Kaworu had wanted to comfort her, to help her, and she killed him and it wasn't fair!

Nothing was!

Maybe he was still a child.

Maybe he was Gendo's son, to care so much about one person that honestly, he couldn't be happy at all right now. Even if it meant they could save the world.

Maybe he was Gendo's son, because right now, he thought, making a borrowed hand glow with the light of a soul that wasn't his, he really wanted to kill some people. Quite a lot of them.

* * *

Gendo fought.

He didn't know what he was _doing_, and he certainly didn't know what was happening until Shinji was past his shields and had Rei change the body so that it looked like his, so Gendo would know who was killing him.

It would take him awhile to track down SEELE, even with Rei to monitor communications. He'd thought that finding them would be the only challenge, even if planetary humans were supposed to be tougher than angels mind-to-mind.

Fuyutsuki had been tougher than Kaworu, gentle-souled Kaworu. He still hadn't fought. Half because he craved death, and half because Yui's teacher and accessory after the fact to Second Impact (before and after to Third) knew damn well that he deserved to die.

Gendo knew he deserved to die and did not give a fuck.

Images of a teenager, Shinji's age and older and younger, punching someone in the face and ignoring a return blow to grab them by the shirtfront, pull them off balance and send their head smashing down into the pavement. Sinking teeth into a hand someone tried to clamp over his mouth, a vicious "Crazy little bastard!" And he was a bastard. No father, and his mother had left him because she wanted another man to like her and the other man didn't want to deal with a kid. He was a bastard, but so what? So was everyone else.

Everyone except Yui. This world was trash, he wanted to burn it all down, and there was exactly one thing that was worth anything. It wasn't that he wanted to destroy the world for Yui. He just wanted to destroy the world. That Yui wanted him to do it wasn't even an excuse: he didn't need an excuse. The world deserved it, and the world wanted it. And that last part was the only possible reason _not _to destroy it.

Maybe other people would panic and wonder what was happening. Shinji doubted SEELE had ever faced real danger, the real threat of death. Others might hesitate to unleash their inner beast, the part of them that knew how to kill, that knew things the conscious mind had never needed to learn.

Gendo _was _a beast, and maybe, for a moment, Shinji almost… appreciated him for it, he thought as he stood there in front of the desk, watching blood pour out of an ear to spread across slick darkness, just like his father's soul.

Because if it was easy, then it would have reminded him of Kaworu's death. If Gendo hadn't fought, then it was possible that the part of Shinji that had been raised by someone who hated the idea of hurting people might have felt guilty.

If it was quick, then he wouldn't have gotten to enjoy it.

It wasn't quite like wrapping his hands around a neck and squeezing. Not even like clawed hands, digging thumbnails into the jugular and feeling warmth flow down his arms, coating his hands until it stopped, the scent of iron filling the air.

This man had hurt him, had tried to kill him without remorse and with more than a little glee of his own when he saw that it was Shinji who would be his death. This man was a monster, this man was his enemy, and he was dead. The world was a cleaner and better place for it.

What made it even better, he thought, was that Adam had refused to help him with this. Because Tabris wouldn't have. And that meant that until he was done with SEELE he wouldn't have to face the reminder of what he had lost.

That didn't mean he wasn't going to hurry, though.

For the world to be restored… wasn't that what Tabris had wanted?

He'd also wanted Shinji to be happy, but even SEELE agreed that reshaping the world was easy compare to that. And what did those old bastards have to be so unhappy about?

Perhaps he'd find out. Perhaps he'd take his time with them.

* * *

"So you're supposed to arrest me?"

"Supposed to," Kaji agreed with a relaxed smile as he turned to see Shinji stepping out from behind some bushes. Up here in the hills, it had taken quite awhile to track him down. This was the boy's hometown: he clearly knew these woods like the back of his hand. Well enough to survive here without venturing into town for about eight months: He looked a little thin, but not underfed. "Don't you want a change of scenery? Do you good to get back to civilization." Away from the memories.

"Tomorrow, with snipers," the ex-pilot said, blue eyes looking right though Kaji, and Kaji wished he could do that. Except maybe not. Had it done Shinji all that much good? "You're not supposed to approach me on your own."

"Theoretically it's something like half protective custody?" Kaji mused. "With all the documents Misato and you guys," you guys meaning Rei, since according to Ritsuko angels could make mere mortal computer systems sit up and beg, "dumped, there's evidence that you did save the world." And not just by fixing up the place. Although killing the rest of SEELE, and his own father in cold blood? Kaji knew the feeling, but if people acted on their _feelings_, well, wasn't that what Gendo and SEELE had done? They'd wanted what they'd wanted, and disregarded every kind of morals and right thinking to get what they wanted.

Kaji did want Shinji locked up. Before he decided he wanted to kill Misato. A psychic assassin and mind-reader, with Lilith backing him up?

Right after Third Impact, it had disgusted Kaji that people wanted Shinji dead for fighting to save the world. Now, now things were a little more negotiable. Now Shinji had blood on his hands, blood he'd damn well chosen to soak them in.

"They know I'm a key to Third Impact, since my real body is Unit 01 now," Shinji said shortly. "The people they have interviewing Rei: why not call themselves the Committee for Human Instrumentality?"

That brought Kaji up short. "You're saying that they're more of SEELE?"

"I'm saying that they want instrumentality. That they want Rei to trigger it for them," Shinji said. "SEELE's ritual needs two angel souls so that they'll interfere with each other, and they're thinking about using me as one of them, since Adam took Bardiel with him." So neither angel would hurt this world any more than they already had.

The lines of questioning, the questions they'd asked Kaji, the parts of his research both the UN and reporters were most interested in echoed in his thoughts as his mind raced. "What Kaworu said," that day when he took him to meet Misato. "SEELE trying to make us all want to die."

"Neither of us should have trusted _them_," a shake of Shinji's head at the world, "with the truth. Misato knew that, otherwise WILLE would have tried to bust the conspiracy wide open."

Kaji nodded: he'd thought that Misato would want to tell the whole world, it was half of why he'd avoided telling her anything until she tied him to- But she'd known better. Until the seas were blue again, until the last angels except for Lilith were gone, until the world was safe… But then, it wasn't like the world hadn't been in danger of annihilation before Second Impact. Hell, before the invention of the nuke. Mankind's biggest problem was mankind, all along.

"They want their dead families back," Shinji knew. "The way my father wanted my mother. All kinds of people saying I should turn myself in, for that. Give back what _I _took from them, in Third Impact." A laugh. "I've only got one person I want back, and I couldn't look him in the eye if I killed everyone just so that he could live. No, I can't look him in the eye already. For the Lilim to die, just so that he could live? I'm not going to do that to him. And that means I'm not going to give _them _what they want, either."

"You have that body because of Rei, right?" Kaji said thoughtfully, looking up at the sky. At where Unit 01 wasn't, because it had been brought down to earth already. UN scientists pouring over it, despite Misato's campaigning to have it destroyed. What was worth the risk of keeping around a doomsday machine like that?

Why, it was almost as though they wanted that thing to destroy them all. "What happens if they tell her to bring you in?" Kaji wanted to know. "If she's the reason you have that body, can't she just?" he waggled his fingers.

"Trap my soul in the Eva, until I lose my Lilim mind and my soul converts to the angelic format, I'm no longer _me _and there's nothing a mental infant could do to stop them from using me for Fourth Impact." Yes, Rei could do that. Could make SEELE's Fourth Impact back-up plan a reality. "Unless I kill her first."

"Let's hope it doesn't come to that," Kaji said, and really wanted a cigarette. A drink, and Misato, because if Lilith died every soul on this world was going to die. Nothing left but smears of red-orange. Nothing to show they were ever here, but the memories in Adam and Bardiel. But the few spacecraft made from metal instead of particle-wave matter they'd sent sailing out into the night. But a few decades of TV transmissions, that might be so distorted by the time they reached some other human world with receivers to here for them to realize that this was a product of intelligent life.

Not that most shows qualified as products of _intelligent _life, true. "I wanted to say that you couldn't keep running. Not with the whole world looking for you, even if there isn't much of it left."

"They want Misato for letting Bardiel leave, don't they?" When Bardiel would have obeyed Misato's order to stay, and angels couldn't travel alone. When that would have left Adam trapped here, and Adam was one of the two souls SEELE's ritual was designed for. "They're not even pretending she's just testifying anymore." She was up on charges herself, for not revealing the truth earlier, for a dozen other ridiculous things…

For preventing instrumentality and complementation.

For trying to save the human race.

SEELE was responsible for billions of deaths in Second and Third Impact both. It wasn't just personal revenge Shinji had gotten, but revenge for the world. So why was the world _really_ so upset?

The birds Kaji had scared away – Shinji was too good at traveling through the woods, give Kaji a city any day – were coming back. The way the blue seas had come back.

Kaji didn't think Shinji really cared.

How many people cared about birds, about a hunk of rock in space, when these were the people they loved that were dead, and they wanted them back? No matter what it took?

Kaji leaned back against a tree, hearing the leaves crunch underfoot as he took a step back to get comfortable. "Do you think Rei will do it?"

"We're not in contact anymore. I'd have to get close enough to find her to restore the link. I'm the one that cut it." Because he was angry with her. "So I can't restore her memories." So all they'd have to do was kill the mother of their species, and have the new one trap their savior in solitary until he went mad (just like Misato) and became something inhuman.

Hell, compared to the billions killed for the sake of complementation in Second Impact, that wasn't much at all, was it? So many ways they could justify it to themselves. Execution for Third Impact, if they wanted to revive one more of Gendo and SEELE's lies. "You're going to let us capture you tomorrow, aren't you?" Kaji asked. They might let him see Rei – Kaji would try to make that happen – but it also meant they could have him executed. It didn't take Shinji long to take someone out, but multiple soldiers with guns? It would just take one living long enough to pull the trigger.

"I'm not going to be that convincing," Shinji knew. "What do I have to live for?"

"To spit in their eye," Kaji said without needing even an instant to think of an answer. "To spite those bastards. That we're still here, despite everything they tried to do to us. We don't care what they wanted, or what they tried to make us want."

Even if Shinji's eyes were blue, they were the night sky, not an eternal summer's day. "That's enough for me," he agreed.

"_But. There should have been a but in there,_" Kaji thought, and wondered why he didn't need to ask "_but what?"_ But he, Shinji, Misato: they were none of them normal, were they? And maybe that was a good thing. It would be nice to think that most people were better off than the three of them. Less broken. That the world was a little less broken, and could pick itself up and go on spinning.

Except there wasn't anyone in this world who wasn't broken.

And it was only human to want more. To want a life full of love and togetherness instead of one that ran on spite and old anger. How many people had been killed throughout history in the name of some imagined heaven?

"Shit," he said thoughtfully, looking up at the sky again. Because they were kind of in for it now, weren't they?

* * *

"They _what_?" Asuka demanded.

Better to think of her as Asuka than Bardiel, especially when neither Tabris nor Adam's memories of the original Bardiel, the sane one, had survived intact. Better for the person he was talking to now (for a given value of talking, of course) to carry the name of someone brave enough to fight for their world's future than be constantly reminded of their fall into madness. "I can't think of any other explanation for these readings." As much as he wished there was one.

"Turn this thing around," she ordered.

Exactly what were they supposed to do? Yes, it was unfair for the tale of the Lilim to end like this, for all their dogged survival and all their art to come to this, an entire world full of people turned into nothing more than a vast slime mold. All those souls trapped within it until the end of this universe.

_Shinji's _soul trapped within it.

The boy was no creation of his, not even of Tabris', and yet… "Although that mass contains all of their minds, none of them possess any control, not even of their own thoughts." Nothing dividing their selves. No solid place to stand. "There is no one left there, and so there can be no one in control."

"The power of billions of souls," Bardiel said, clearly wondering what the administrator was getting at, even as the angel felt the Black Egg's energy profile change, shifting back to normal space in order to plot a course back through Dirac Space. "What would _you_ need that for?" What did a carrier administrator, one of the beings capable of sparking new universes, need with planetary human souls? Well, obviously a universe wasn't much good if there wasn't anyone to live there, but that was a matter of individual souls, not power. A mass of souls stripped of individuality was obviously a really dumb idea, unless you were a congenital idiot like the members of SEELE.

"The _processing power _of billions of souls," Adam corrected her, because he _was _an administrator. Personal memories were fragile, when they were meant to be set aside. An angel could not place personal desires above the fate of their world, so the memories which gave rise to personal desires were… lightly tethered. By design. How to do what they were made for, _that _was hard-coded. "Terraforming a planet is one thing. _Restoring_ it…" Would normally be impossible.

"Billions of networked minds," Asuka mused, cocking her head to the side, and it was Asuka again, because no proper angel would even contemplate making use of something as disgusting as the mass SEELE had created (but Bardiel and Adam had both been driven insane, hadn't they? No proper angel would seek to exterminate a world).

Better to destroy it. To free those souls. Reterraform the world so they'd have a place to be reborn.

But to just wipe away all the history of the Lilim?

When it might, when it _had_ to be possible to give them a second chance? To set things right, bring back all of those who died in Second Impact, when _his _power was what had truly gone rogue and devastated this world?

This was a universe designed from the ground up, created by the human will in the first place: it was just as easy to twist time as to twist space, if one knew how. When time and space were the same thing, and the original universe's light speed limit meant it took forever to get anywhere.

Could Second Impact be undone? Could the Lilim have another chance to thrive? And not just any Lilim, not simply any souls, but those who had fought so hard to survive?

Another chance for Shinji to live?

Even though Shinji wasn't his child, he remembered seeing him smile. At him (at Tabris), at the world around him. Remembered watching him fight for the sake of others, and…

If the Lilim were brought back? It would be impossible to edit their memories, not when there would be billions of them. A file restore would take centuries as it was. They would be the same people they were back then, before they set of Second Impact. SEELE would be the same.

Perhaps the Lilim would save themselves. Perhaps it would happen all over again. Perhaps Shinji would be abandoned all over again.

But even if he wasn't Tabris, even if his soul had merely slept behind those eyes, even if it wasn't him that Shinji had loved… He couldn't just let that young man's entire life have been for nothing.

* * *

_Like in the original End of Evangelion movies, fighting off the angels is comparatively easy. It's when humanity assaults NERV that they are fucked on so many levels._

_Because even if the angels can think, can come up with plans, it's humans that are going about this intelligently, with unit tactics and long-term strategies of manipulation and application and development of infrastructure. The one angel with a brain on our level would have won, except he was smart enough to realize that this whole instrumentality thing was just really effing stupid._

_Seriously, that's manga!Kaworu's opinion of it, and he was nine days old when he died. That's even more so than the Evil Overlord List's five-year-old advisor. When someone who has only been around for nine days and hasn't even had time to figure out the universal bathroom signs can tell at a glance that your plan sucks, then it is _really _dumb. _

_Anime!Kaworu dies because he's not willing to kill billions just in order to save his own life. Manga!Kaworu dies because this entire instrumentality thing is really effing stupid, but he knows that if he just blows it off and leaves the old men of SEELE will have him hunted down like a dog (smart enough not to underestimate humans) and he doesn't want to give them the satisfaction. They've controlled his entire life: like hell he wants them to have his death. _

_Here, Shinji won't be able to think about his childhood with Tabris, all the things Tabris taught him about how life is worth living because of nature, music, people, without thinking of the fact that Tabris is dead. He'd let Instrumentality happen over his dead body, but he's considered a villain, not a world hero, so for _him _to be anti-people getting their loved ones back, when he's the reason billions of people are dead? He's really not going to be able to convince people that life's worth living when he's mostly hanging on to it himself out of sheer bloody-minded determination to not let the bastards win. _

_So people believing in SEELE, the ones actually responsible for what happened, instead of the person who kept Third Impact from killing everyone… Sad, but such is the Qverse._


End file.
